Brave New World
by STaR Productions
Summary: Sonic the Hedgehog managed to destroy the Death Egg, and the powerful Eclipse Cannon that it housed. But the Death Egg landed on Angel Island, and a certain jewel thief and emerald guardian are in for a surprise guest in the middle of their emerald fight.
1. Chapter 1

**S: Hello everybody! This happens to be the first chapter of my next story! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I hope it lives up to your expectations. By the way, I have not mixed up the ARK and the Death Egg. It's supposed to be like this.**

**Please, enjoy.**

* * *

He could feel the burning pain already leaving him. The hot, seething feeling of power had scarred his body and mind in close to an instant. Even now, though it was gone, he could sense the presence of the gems that caused the transformation.

The Chaos Emeralds. The seven jewels of power, hidden for ages past in the Special Zone, only to be resurrected from their eternal prison by an insane scientist. As the hero understood it, based on garbled words from his friend, the Doctor had used the limited strength of the emeralds from that dimension to summon them back to Mobius from the Special Zone.

He had used the jewels to power a devastating weapon: the Eclipse Cannon. Just thinking of the awesome power of that one device, pointing at him from thousands of miles above, made him shiver in fear. Not even he could outrun that.

…Not that it mattered quite so much as it used to. He turned in midair, realising it was the power of the Chaos Emeralds that had saved him from a horrible fate burning in Mobius' atmosphere. He could see the monstrous Death Egg from here, red and orange flashing against the constant blackness of space as it crumbled. The machine would come crashing down from space, taking its terrifying weapon, and the Doctor, with it to its grave.

And meanwhile, Sonic the Hedgehog fell. He fell, and then he fell some more. Sonic would yawn in boredom, if he weren't busy panicking from imagining himself as a small red speck on the grassland below. At least he did his job, to the best of his ability.

But that wasn't what being a hero was about, was it? You couldn't just _nearly_ save the world, _nearly_ save the helpless child from an oncoming boulder. Fortunately he had succeeded in defeating not only Metal Sonic, but also the Doctor's Egg Emperor machine. Although he had to admit, if he hadn't been in the middle of losing the fight when _it_ happened, he probably wouldn't have won.

Sonic knew that the Chaos Emeralds were needed for the Eclipse Cannon to fire. Even if he couldn't stop the Doctor, he knew that wrecking the precious console of his vile weapon would save the world from its horrible fate. But as soon as he had got close to the shining jewels, they had done something to him. Suddenly even the Egg Emperor seemed incredibly slow to him. He had smashed straight through the space station before losing control, and falling back to Mobius.

And he was still falling. Almost afraid to look, Sonic turned his head a fraction. Did he want to see the ground as it got close enough? Did he want to witness his incredibly frail body get closer and closer to the crushing impact of his death? Sonic shivered, picturing it in his mind. If he looked, then first his face would pop like a ripe fruit, closely followed by his arms and chest, stabbing themselves with his own bones before he completely shattered like a glass filled with red juice on the nearest rock.

On the other hand, if he didn't look, he would never see when the impact would happen. It could be _right now_…

Sonic panicked and looked. The green smudge of land was still a comfortable distance away. He sighed. Wait… what was that?

There was a red shape coming closer to him, coming straight towards him. What in Mobius…?

"-ic! Hang on!"

_Tails_!

The kid must have managed to repair the Tornado! Relief flooded the hedgehog; at least he was all right! He had thought…

No good thinking like that, Sonic! It didn't happen, and that's all that matters! Now… er… how was Tails gonna save him? He couldn't just catch him, he must have been going hundreds of miles an hour, it would just be like hitting the ground, wouldn't it?

Tails seemed to have the same thought, as he quickly veered away from his course and passed Sonic, going straight up. The fox and his plane quickly faded from view, and Sonic's spirits dropped just as quickly again. Well, he couldn't have done more than he did…

_Don't be ridiculous! Tails wouldn't abandon you!_

How can he possibly save me? I know I wouldn't want to see me splat into a planet at hundreds of miles an hour.

_You underestimate him._

Look, I can feel the wind through my spines, ok? Hitting the plane would be just like hitting the ground. I'm not that stupid, you know.

_Unless the ground was moving at the same speed you were._

…What?

Just then a flash of red burst past the hedgehog, and his eyes opened wide, uncaring about the harsh wind. Tails had went straight up, but then came straight back down again, now flying at the same angle the hedgehog was falling.

The fox opened his mouth and screamed at Sonic, but he couldn't hear. Tails' face was like a demon's, and Sonic was uncomfortably aware of the kid's sharp teeth as he yelled his lungs out to his older brother. Sonic got the general feeling of it though.

Sonic twisted in the air and flailed, desperately trying to grab the plane's wing. He glanced at the ground below, and saw it incredibly close. _He could make out trees!_

His white gloves scraped along the metal wing, but did not find purchase. Sonic was still plummeting in freefall, and soon Tails would have no choice but to pull up.

_Oh gods, I can see roads!_

His arms seemed to be made of syrup. He couldn't move them fast enough! Tails was staring straight ahead, his face a mask. Sonic grabbed at the plane again, and if he could just… yes… yes…

Got it! Sonic pulled with all his might, and dragged his unyielding blue body onto the dull grey wing of the Tornado. He held onto it with both hands, not daring to even move as the plane lurched through the sky. The individual trees seemed to rise up, throwing themselves towards him like starving dogs deprived of their tender meat. And then, they disappeared. Cheerful clouds floating in an ocean blue clear sky greeted him with smiles.

Sonic took a long breath, feeling it flow through his body and purge his system of toxins. He recovered rather fast, being used to travelling at high speeds. Admittedly not so… vertically, but still pretty fast.

Sonic lay there for a long time, just simply breathing. Existing while not a red stain on the ground had never been so satisfying. The cool wings of the plane served to soothe him, and the gentle phut of the engines was rhythmic and slow. Then he remembered about the Death Egg.

"Sonic!" gasped Tails as his brother leapt to his feet and stared at the sky. He followed his gaze, and saw a large shadow in the atmosphere above them. "You did… blow it up… didn't you, Sonic?"

Sonic remained silent. It was as if he was a statue on the wing, ceaselessly beholding the heavens with his gaze of stone. The fox would have been fooled if his spines weren't flowing in the wind. He'd never seen Sonic act like this before. Even when the Doctor fought them personally, Sonic had always been ready with a cocky wisecrack and his trademark speedy attitude.

It was very rare that Tails got to see the other, darker side of his adoptive brother. The one that was silent, the one that was thoughtful, the one that showed his _hate_. The one that Tails had learned to avoid because he could see a shadow of how the Doctor looked at everyone he saw in Sonic's gaze when he was in this mood. He always refused to speak of it afterwards, not that the fox wanted to discuss it, but it was clear that whatever the Doctor had done to Sonic, it had been _bad_.

The shadow that Sonic was looking at lengthened, and Sonic gasped. As it came closer, Tails gasped too. It wasn't the Death Egg; it was an island in the sky! The sight was awe-inspiring, the dark brown underbelly was jagged and uneven, as if ripped from the ground, but it still carried a marvellous grandeur about it, as if it had been designed to be looked at from below. The rocks spiralled around each other, getting longer towards the centre until one lone pillar acted as the point. As Tails watched, he could see small rocks fall from it and tumble towards the planet below.

It would have been even more impressive if there weren't another shadow heading straight for the heavenly floating land. The Death Egg plummeted, cradled like a satanic newborn inside its cocoon of flames and debris. The station fell agonisingly slow, tearing apart any unfortunate clouds in its way, leaving behind belching columns of black smoke. It was amazing that the gargantuan craft had survived this long.

"Sonic," Tails whispered, "What did you do?"

Sonic turned to his brother, his eyes shining and his faced creased with worry. "I… don't know."

"But how could you have destroyed it so fast, Sonic? It's the size of the _moon_…"

"I… I…"

There was silence between them. The wind flowed around Sonic's spines as he stared at the Tornado's small golden-furred pilot, looking at him expectantly. Tails' muzzle was dancing in the wind, as was his fur and bangs, but his eyes remained focused on the hedgehog, penetrating sky blue. The air whistled around the tiny craft, caught in a bubble of awkward quiet.

There was a muted thunder, echoing into the distance. Sonic turned around to the island, and saw the enormous dust that the Death Egg kicked up before the shockwave hit the plane, spiralling it out of control.

* * *

"You idiot! If you would just give me what is rightfully mine, this wouldn't be happening!"

"Like I'm ever going to give up to a thief like you!"

Knuckles remained resolute, standing between the thief and the Master Emerald. His red fur was streaked with sweat and his muscles were heated with hard use, but he appeared as fit as ever. This came from being an echidna, the strongest species on Mobius, perfectly suited to guarding the jewel of power. His spines, hanging from his proud head, were defined in green light from the altar, and he crossed his arms, glaring at his opponent.

The thief slowly rose, her progress slowed by the aches in her torso. She had not been expecting such an ordeal. The two of them had tracked each other through the Mushroom Hill Zone for days, and that had sorely affected her outfit. And then, when she had finally found the Hidden Palace, that echidna showed up out of nowhere and had taken the pretty emerald to the surface, leaving her to the traps.

Pretty effective traps too, but they were designed for someone who couldn't fly. She grinned inwardly, remembering the echidna's face as she simply flew straight up the shaft leading to the surface when he had escaped with the Master Emerald.

Rouge the Bat was not very happy. All her stealth techniques were useless against the echidna; he seemed to have an almost psychic ability to find her. That was where the bruises had come from. He was not as fast as her in combat, but if she got hit, it _hurt_. Apparently not hitting a woman wasn't included in his honourable code of conduct.

She was a white furred fruit bat, known through certain circles in Mobius as the greatest thief in the world. The white fur was a contrast to her attire; a tight-fitting black jumpsuit which showed off her assets extremely well. Her wings could easily fold up on her back, and unfurl just as fast as her feet could swing a kick at her unfortunate enemies. While the echidna's spines flowed with the wind, her large ears were twitching at his presence rather than the air currents caused by their size.

Despite both of their efforts, neither had yet emerged victorious in the struggle. Rouge was still on the island, and Knuckles still had the Master Emerald. Neither intended for this state of affairs to continue.

"Just give me it! You don't know what to do with such a pretty jewel!"

The echidna's eyes narrowed in disgust. "You think of it as just a pretty jewel, thief? The Master Emerald is more than that!"

Rouge growled in exasperation, looking up at the half-hidden guardian in front of the grand emerald. "At least I would use it properly, rather than it sitting around to get tarnished!"

"You know how to use the emerald?"

There was no change in the stance, but Rouge could detect a certain tone in her opponent's voice. Aha…

"Of course I can use it! Can't you?"

"…If you wish to use it…" Knuckles said, unfolding his arms.

Rouge slowly changed her stance into a more seductive one, showing off her curves beneath her black jumpsuit. "Yes?"

Only her quick reactions saved her as she dived to the side. Rouge rolled on the floor and righted herself as Knuckles recovered from his strike. She hadn't even seen him until the last second.

"…Then it is my duty to protect the Master Emerald!" Knuckles bared his sharp teeth, pure white against his red fur. His fur was the colour of blood, and it was all too easy to imagine that colour on his teeth too, fresh from you. His face was absolutely terrifying; Rouge knew any hope of convincing him was long gone. Perhaps it had never existed anyway. The grass around him was gone, destroyed by his punch. He stood in a crater made by his fist alone, and without hesitation, he charged.

Rouge jumped, swinging her feet around to try and counter him as he struck where she was. Her strength and speed was in her feet, while his was in his hands. This made their duels unpredictable at best, and Rouge often came off worse before having to fly away. That wasn't to say it went all his way, but sometimes he was almost unstoppable.

Knuckles effortlessly blocked her kicks with his lower arms and grabbed her ankle. He swung her around his head and threw her across the clearing with a grunt. Rouge righted herself and darted to the sky as another earth-shattering punch cracked the ground beneath her. This was her chance.

She began spinning round and round at an incredible speed, locked her feet into a pointed position, and shot straight down at him. He jumped backwards as she drilled into the floor, and aimed a kick at her kneeling form. Rouge barely avoided it and struck out with a punch at his face. It connected with a crunch, and Knuckles stumbled back a few steps.

To Rouge's relief, Knuckles did not attack back, and she panted freely from her defensive stance. The guardian, still apparently not tired at all, reached up calmly to his face, and felt his cheek, checking for injuries.

His eyebrows lifted up in confusion, as he felt neither damage nor pain. He looked at his opponent. Rouge's jaw was locked in a grimace, and she cradled her hand to her chest. Knuckles grinned.

"I see you are injured, by your own attack no less. I will give you one more chance to get off my island forever."

Rouge seethed through her teeth at the grinning echidna. It felt like her hand was broken! "You have such a hard head, big guy. No wonder you don't listen to reason."

"What?!"

It was the girl's turn to smile. "You obviously have no fashion sense whatsoever. I mean… green, with red? How silly."

The guardian's face had darkened with rage, but there was also indecision. Attacking an injured person was dishonourable as the first move. If the fight had continued there would be no problem, but because they had paused, combat had to again be initiated. Knuckles was not used to making snap decisions. Whether thrashing her and throwing her off the island was an acceptable action, or whether not doing so, was a difficult choice. Was attacking her justified?

Rouge took a step towards him, speaking to him in an alluring tone. "Why do you even guard that thing anyway? It doesn't do anything for you, after all."

Knuckles took a step back. "The Master Emerald must be protected! It is my duty, batgirl!"

"But _why_? Surely you know that?"

"…"

"You don't even know? Maybe I could help you find out…"

She reached out her uninjured hand to him. For a moment Knuckles considered believing her, but something about her suggestion didn't seem right. He took the hand, making Rouge smile.

"I protect the Master Emerald because that was what I have sworn to do. The Master Emerald keeps the island of my ancestors floating in the sky. That is all I need to know." He tugged her towards him and swivelled her body around, and Rouge found herself completely helpless in his grip.

"Hey! Let me go!"

"I am taking you off the island. Never come back."

Rouge struggled vainly in his grip. Knuckles walked across the grassy meadow, holding her to him in a sort of bear hug. Rouge's mind flashed with images of him simply throwing her off the edge, and her falling to her doom. Did he know that she had a plane to get here? Was he going to drop her off the edge?! Maybe he would break her wings first so she couldn't fly, and then laugh as he threw her down towards the ground far below.

"No! I won't let you! Get off me! _Get off_!"

She writhed and slipped out of his hands. He yelled to her but she took off in a panic without a look back.

And then froze completely in shock.

_What the hell is that?_

A giant mass of metal was heading straight for the island! She could see it tearing the air apart with its passing, setting it on fire like a grotesque trail in the air. She barely heard the guardian gasp as the gigantic craft smashed into the island, making the entire island shake with the impact. Rouge saw the shockwave, and then everything went dark.

* * *

This was a darkened room. That much was obvious. The figure looked around, pondering this strange situation. Devices littered the floor, and there were many blinking lights that made no sense to it. Many of them were flashing red, though, and it was clear even to the recently awakened creature that a continuous voice shouting 'Danger' was rarely a good sign.

* * *

**S: I hope you liked it. I'm not particularly impressed with the second scene, but it's not too bad, I think. Who do you think the mysterious figure is, then? Or is it totally obvious... probably.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	2. Chapter 2

**S: Well, hello there everyone. I am back from holiday, and what better way to show it than with a second chapter of this story? Considering how everybody seemed to love the first one, I'm anxious as to whether this one lives up to it. But I always talk like this, so without further inane babbling from me, please, enjoy.**

* * *

_Take me with you!_

What?

_You possess enough power! …Given the right circumstances…_

What do you mean? Who is there?

_I'm here…but hurry! There is little time before they awake!_

I don't understand… where am I? How did I…?

_There is no time! You want answers, don't you? Move quickly!_

Why should I help you? What do you know of me?

_…_

As I thought.

_…_

Wait! What are you…?

_You WILL help me. You will not remember it though…_

* * *

"What are we gonna do now, Sonic?"

"We're gonna make sure that hunk of junk never takes off again!"

The Tornado was nearing the strange island now, heading straight for the crashed Death Egg. Sonic could see that there were already many fires built up around the spherical craft, wrecking the beautiful jungle it landed on even further. Many miles of greenery had already been laid to waste by the encroaching flames, and no doubt the surviving Badniks were busy capturing the innocent creatures of this land as well.

Sonic clenched his fist in memory. He would destroy every single one of them. The Doctor would pay for everything he'd done. Sonic's vision became clouded by smoke, conjured by the memory of one day in his past. The day when…

He couldn't bear to think of it. He had lost everything that day, and he had vowed revenge for…

"Sonic!"

Sonic jerked out of his trance. "What is it, Tails?" The kid was staring to the right side of the plane, his mouth open in shock. Sonic tensed for a Badnik air strike, but a quick fly-by was not forthcoming. "What's wro-"

Then a mighty thump shook the plane, nearing throwing Sonic off it. The hedgehog whipped round to be faced with a demonic apparition of blood red fur. The attacker snarled at him and swung his fist straight towards Sonic's face, the spiked gauntlet just missing him as he darted backwards.

The battle was massively one-sided. Tails could only watch in horror as Sonic barely avoided swing after swing of the growling Mobian's fists. The blue blur had no chance to blur, with only a few feet of wing to stand on, and would eventually run out of room to dodge the scything spiked gloves. Tails could not shake the plane to throw off the large dreadlocked creature without dislodging Sonic too, and the jungle trees were not exactly an inviting prospect for plummeting towards. In fact, the trees seemed to be leering at the hedgehog, waiting for the chance to devour him like their surface brethren had tried to.

Sonic leapt forward in an attempt to overpower the stranger, but he simply grabbed Sonic in mid air with one hand, and with careful deliberation, dropped him off the side of the plane to the trees below. The hedgehog fell like a stone, and crashed through the thick foliage, out of sight.

"SONIC!" screamed Tails. The winner of the fight turned his face to the young fox, his spines dancing in the wind, as if in bloodthirsty victory of his opponent's demise. The horrible violet eyes seemed to burn with righteous fury, but Tails was not cowed. The fox's fingers tightened on the controls of the small plane, nearly shattering under his sudden rage. He twisted the plane, performing a barrel roll to throw off his brother's killer.

But the devil was not to be taken care of so easily. In one fluid motion he slammed his spiked fist into the wing and held there, despite Tails' manouveres. He slowly climbed towards the fox, smashing footholds throughout the body of the Tornado, until he was face to face with him. He reached down and smothered the controls with one massive hand, and broke them with a single flex of his wrist. Tails' face crumbled at the destruction of his beloved plane, as it spattered and died with a whine.

Leaving Tails to try and salvage control back, the stranger jumped up, and somehow floating in the air, joined his fists together. He glanced around quickly to aim himself, and smacked the plane's metallic body with both his fists at once. A dull thump reverberated for miles around the island, and the Tornado lurched and crumpled like tin foil.

Knuckles' aim was perfect. The craft descended, oddly silently, straight back over the edge of the island from where it came. A grey trail of smoke was the only thing left to mark its passage into the void. Knuckles looked down, to the jungle. The other intruder had fallen there, into the trees. While normally he would go eliminate him immediately, he had more pressing concerns than what was most likely a corpse on the ground, and without even so much as a look back, he elegantly turned his spines and glided away from the scene of merciless destruction.

* * *

"Come on you stupid thing! What's wrong with you?" Rouge slapped the side of her emerald detector indignantly. "You were working fine a moment ago!"

The small handheld device continued to beep, and to Rouge it sounded like a constant laugh. The detector was supposed to point her towards the Master Emerald, but for some reason it was telling her that the emerald was, in fact, everywhere. The constant beeping was an insult to her intelligence, as if the thing was mocking her for not seeing the massive jewel in front of her eyes. Gnashing her teeth, she slapped it again.

Unsurprisingly, this failed to make a difference, and if anything the beep seemed to get louder. The batgirl screamed her frustration at the innocent clouds above, and resisted the urge to smash the insolent thing to pieces. It seemed to grin at her in her mind, content with the knowledge that it was far too valuable to destroy.

"Don't push your luck, pal," she hissed at it. If only she had seen where the emerald had gone! Then she wouldn't be flying around in circles over some bloody desert! She hadn't come this way before, and after just five minutes she already wished she hadn't.

Where did that emerald go? It was sitting right there on the altar when the weird ship had crashed, but when she woke up, it was gone! The echidna woke up at the same time as her, and he had immediately attempted to attack her for stealing it, so it couldn't have been him. After a moment he realised that she hadn't stolen it either, so there must have been a third party involved somewhere. The two of them were in a race to find it now, and _this stupid thing wasn't working!_

Why not?! It had led her unerringly through the island before, ever pointing towards the beautiful glowing emerald that she desired so much. Now suddenly it wasn't.

Rouge sighed, carefully weaving around a particularly large stone structure jutting out of the unending sand. They say that the colour white reflects heat. Fair enough, but a tight black jumpsuit was not helping at all. She felt sticky with sweat, and compounded by her frustration, the elegant bat was beginning to feel exhausted. She turned around and landed on the stone she had just passed, gratefully sinking onto it and letting the muscle cramps fade out of her wings.

Rouge wiped her head, feeling her fur stick to her skin unpleasantly. Her once fine white fur had turned a dull, unclean grey, and with every movement she made, more sweat inched down her back, making her shiver. She licked her dried lips, having nothing to show but the wretched taste of salt, and her throat was so parched it burned when she swallowed. She bitterly regretted not bringing some water with her.

How the hell does this place even exist, anyway? A desert on one side, tropical jungle on the other, a physics-defying volcano and an icecap! Compared to all these geological impossibilities, a mere island floating in the sky was tame. Even worse when there were no helpful signs saying 'jewel this way'. Preferably also saying 'some cool refreshing water as well' and 'showers to remove sand too'.

It was a source of incredibly annoying mystery how sand managed to get inside her suit, despite it being waterproof as well as nowhere near the bloody sand in the first place. And sweat apparently wasn't included in that 'waterproof' statement either. If Rouge had her way, the sun would be repositioned a comfortable million miles away further than it already was from the planet. Deserts would be banned, as would possessive echidnas and _goddamned scanners!_

Why had her scanner failed? It had worked fine before, and she had found the emerald without any great difficulty, there was just the problem of ownership to settle and it would've been hers.

And while she was unconscious, some idiot had thought to steal her precious jewel from under her nose! If that ship hadn't landed…

If that ship…

The ship! Of course!

Rouge looked towards the horizon. Beyond the desert, the blackened metal craft skulked on top of the Lava Reef Zone, near the volcano. It may just have been the rising heat, but the bat could swear that the ship looked at her, could sense her gaze upon it. It was mocking. The master thief, prominent name in the underground for her quick wit and intelligence, cursed her sudden stupidity. It must've been someone from there, why hadn't she thought of it earlier?

Rouge turned her head to look upon her malfunctioning scanner. She was pleased to hear that the annoying beep had become somewhat muted, as if the horrible little device had realised it's own life expectancy was becoming less by the second.

"Not so smug now, are you?"

Rouge stood up on the stone, wincing at the sudden discomfort. It felt as though her fur had become liquid underneath her suit, and she had to blink out some running sweat from her forehead before she prepared to take off.

_I hate hot places. Maybe that refreshing bit of civilisation has air conditioning or something. It's got to be better than this place._

With her sights set firmly on the Death Egg, cocooned in its nest of flames and broken land, Rouge the Bat took off, blissfully ignorant of just where she was going, and whom she was going to meet.

* * *

**S: I hope it lived up to what you were expecting. Just like with the first chapter, I'm not so confident about Rouge's scene here. And what was with the conversation at the beginning? Hmm hmm, you'll just have to wait, won't you? Although I imagine it's not all that difficult to guess, what with the clues being in plain sight.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	3. Chapter 3

**S: Hello there! Please allow me to apologise for the length of time between this and the previous update. No matter what I did, I couldn't get this chapter right. Seriously, it was absolute crap when I first did it, but hopefully it has now been turned into something that won't burn your eyes out to read.**

**Please, enjoy.**

* * *

The pillar of suffocating dark smoke arched into the sky, thrusting maliciously through the clouds to stab into the atmosphere far above. Knuckles could see the black craft now, devil-child born from the stars, vomit its poison into the pure air, seated like a vulture on the Lava Reef volcano. The purple eyes of the resolute guardian stared down the twisted eyes of the ship as the distance between them closed.

This intruder would be dispatched just like those other two. The island was wounded, and the Master Emerald had been stolen. This would not stand. From his position gliding above, Knuckles could already see the snaking tendrils of flame from the impact engulfing part of the Angel Island Zone. From certain angles it looked like the ship itself was in the jungle, but Knuckles knew that this was an illusion caused by the fearsome heat.

The flames rushed onward, flickering red and orange greedily devouring the green of life. Ancient trunks, denizens of the floating land for thousands of years, succumbed under the scratching talons of the fire. Beautiful plants and flowers, their bright colours and their sweet fragrances that had been in the air for countless generations, were melted and destroyed in seconds. The air was filled with the crackling laughter of the burning destruction, and the jungle screamed in agony.

The Angel Island Zone had been named after Angel Island itself, to honour its vibrant green shine from the air when the sun hit it just right, and the vast, enriching feeling of life and prosperity it gave to all with the good fortune to be in it. Now it was nothing more than a tomb, smothered with the lusting flames and flaky ash.

It was almost more than the Guardian could bear. Knuckles clenched his fists inside his gloves, imagining the perpetrators of this vile act between his fingers. Despite all of his strength or all of his skills, he could not save the Zone now. But he could prevent more from suffering the same fate, or one even worse. Knuckles used the rising heat from the dying jungle to lift himself further into the sky. The many eyes of the Zone below sent accusations of abandonment to his tiny, gliding form. _'You have left us!' _they screeched as they turned to ash. _'Help us, as is your duty, Guardian!'_

The echidna shuddered, and resisted their pleas, however much it made him ache to do so. He had to attack at the source, and this would be his only chance.

His added height allowed him to try and bypass the majority of the island, and head straight to the dark brown, mountainous exterior of the Lava Reef. The base of the mountain was completely unclimbable, even for his talents, and in all the years he had searched only the Sandopolis desert provided the means up to the highest point on the island. Knuckles disliked that Zone; with the shining yellow sand and intense heat it always felt like he was walking on the sun itself. The Guardian allowed himself an inward grin at the thought of the batgirl enduring the harsh heat in that strange black suit she wore. The grim humour was fleeting though, and his thoughts returned to his mission.

With the lift he had gained from the fires, he could manage to take a monumental shortcut, and deal with that _thing_ that dared intrude on the holy island of the Master. Dealing with those two other intruders and figuring out why his senses told him the Master Emerald was everywhere had eaten away at time he didn't have.

Knuckles' usual tactics involved letting the enemy come to him, so that he could remain with his charge, and usually the many traps were more than sufficient to deal with any intruders, of which there was few. Lately it was becoming clear that this did not always work, and so the Guardian was forced to be more aggressive in his defence. Getting rid of that abomination on the volcano would protect the Master Emerald, and then he could discover its whereabouts without any distractions.

He would need his concentration at maximum to discover the Master Emerald, especially as it was being masked by the excess ripples of the Special Zone as the Chaos Emeralds returned to the island again.

* * *

The ugly thing stopped in exactly the wrong place. It swivelled its bulbous eyes to the left, the tiny head appearing completely unable to support the glowing yellow orbs. Its bulky body was painted a dull blue, and next to the head there were two large and sharp claws attached to the main blue frame, which had to lower to allow its eyes to move from side to side. Seeing nothing of interest to its left, the thing looked to the right, optical circuits glinting in the black half-light. Its tiny, insect-like jaws clicked and clattered as it searched, like the machine equivalent of 'hmm...'.

After what seemed like an age, the small creation whirred off down the metal corridor, continuing its endless and no doubt boring journey around the ship. With ghostly silence, Rouge dropped from the ceiling directly above where it had stopped, and watched warily after the idiotic robot. Fortunately, not even robots look up.

_Well, I suppose it's not that bad of a place. Smashing into a volcano and still showing a smug grin on the front deserves some points. That face though… whose is it? It would save me an awful lot of trouble if I could just put my finger on it._

The corridor was black. Completely. The wall, the ceiling, the floor… everything. When Rouge had first sneaked in, past the laughable little guards, there had been dashes of paint here and there, yellows, reds, even blues. As she continued deeper into the structure however, the presentation stopped, and everything became a cold black, pipes and rivets intertwining around the barren surroundings.

_The decoration is awful in here. You'd think the guy would make some effort to keep a theme in here that wasn't just black._

The sudden change in colour was jarring, and it took the thief a moment to adjust. It was as if the ship was a courteous host, all smiles and politeness, until you actually got inside, and then the doors slammed, the lights vanished, and the laughter echoed around the prison you had just walked into. It made her skin crawl, and Rouge wanted nothing more than to grab the jewel and get out of this place as quickly as possible. Sometimes she could hear things moving that sounded far larger than the tiny track robots she had encountered.

If she were the person with the emerald, she would want to make it the centrepiece of anything she made. With that thought, she logically assumed that the emerald would be in the centre of this maze-like place, so Rouge tried to keep her bearings and head straight for the middle. She only deviated from her course when the robotic guards blocked her path, which happened more and more frequently as she got further in, to her annoyance.

Rouge was a determined bat though, and continued onwards, taking the path around any guard patrols and forging ever deeper into the pit of darkness. The corridors were endless, and her vision was limited to about ten feet before her eyes were cowed into submission by the near total absence of light. Relying on her other senses, Rouge still pressed on. That emerald would be _hers_, even if she had to fight an army of those robots! And perhaps one or two of those things making the rumbling noises, too. And the source of that low murmuring that had just started.

Murmuring? The jewel hunter stopped, crouched low, and flexed her ears to their maximum listening distance. A voice could definitely be heard in the distance. "…and that there…if the distance is not too great…perhaps an explorer squadron… that is quite interesting…"

Rouge grinned, her pointed teeth glinting white, and she hovered forth down the corridor, silently flapping her wings to stay a few inches above the floor. After a surprisingly short time, the corridor opened up into a large, well-lit room. After assuring herself through squinting eyes that she was unseen for the moment, Rouge closed her eyes and allowed her vision to adjust to the harsh white light. The light was imprinting itself on her eyelids, and she resisted the urge to shy away.

_At least it's an end to those corridors._

The murmuring was more distinct here, but she could still only hear snippets of the speech. She surveyed her surroundings for a moment while planning the next step to take.

This room was very large and hemispherical with five adjoining tunnels and a large central pillar. The entirety of the space was covered in square grey plates that made up the floor and extended all the way to the curved ceiling. The top of the room was several hundred feet above her head, the highest point in the centre where the pillar connected, and she was currently on some sort of viewing platform, designed to see what was on the bottom. On the bottom floor of the room there were many flashing terminals, glowing that customary sign of 'Danger' to whoever was watching them. A figure darted around them, moving between the constructions with care and speed. A close look revealed that the figure was very large, far taller than her, and with a very obvious paunch.

The actions of the figure were almost like a father having to deal with lots of upset children. He agonised around each console as if he could not decide which was more important, but as he moved between them the angry red signs disappeared, to be replaced by lines of peaceful green text. The green reminded Rouge of what she came for, but to her dismay, there was a lack of large desirable jewels in the chamber.

As she watched, the figure had placated the last machine, and he simply stood in the centre with folded arms, surveying his domain. Rouge was able to look at him in detail now.

He wore black, form fitting pants that appeared to be a one-piece garment, covered by an open, red coat stretching to about his waist, with the coat tails hanging down. The cuffs of the coat were yellow, and showed no skin between his clothing and his large white gloves. By far his most striking feature was an enormous scruffy brown moustache, and he hid his eyes behind tinted blue glasses.

Upon sight of his face, Rouge smiled. He was obviously vain to the point of absurdity if he had even made the exterior of his craft look like his face. His species was not immediately recognisable to her, but this didn't worry the bat unduly. After all, the Guardian had to inform her that he was an echidna. Perhaps he was just another rare species, an exceptionally tall and fat one.

Deciding that he was no threat, the bat let her vision move once again around the room. The five enormous tunnels were placed in an equal distanced pattern around the room, their gaping maws gulping down the light into their dark interiors, and the massive central pillar dominated in the exact centre of the hemispherical chamber. As she cast her eyes along the pillar from her elevated position between two of the tunnels, she wondered why there were no robot guards in sight. Clearly they were designed to protect her unknowing host, even if they were fairly useless at it, so why were there none around?

As Rouge pondered over this, a sudden movement from the moustachioed one drew her attention to him. He reached inside a small yellow compartment on his coat, and took out a little handheld device. After a moment, he grinned, and pressed a button on it. He then looked straight up at Rouge.

_He knows I'm here?!_

Rouge froze with shock, and her wings unfurled on instinct in response to a threat. Before she could move, her wings were seized from behind and she screamed in pain as she was shoved roughly to the ground. The delicate frameworks of her wings were twisted as she was pinned, and all she could do was writhe at the lightning bolts of agony in her back.

She shut her eyes, trying to blot out the pain, and she could just barely feel the floor disappear from underneath her. Something rammed into her stomach, winding her, and she was slammed back down onto very solid metal. She was tightly held, and her arms were taken behind her back. Abruptly, the pain faded, and the thief slumped. Her lungs had decided to disappear from her chest, and the bat desperately clawed at the air with her teeth to try and obtain the precious oxygen she needed.

The air delighted in tormenting her existence, her pitiful attempts at breathing only securing the tiniest amounts of the substance. Slowly the fog in her mind cleared as her breathing returned to normal, and she gingerly moved her wings to see if they were hurt. A complaining throb echoed at her for her troubles, and she sighed in relief that they weren't broken. Then she remembered what happened.

Her eyes shot open, and there was red. She shut them again, and squirmed against her unseen restraints.

"Don't bother. You can't escape."

The voice sent a shiver up her spine. It was utterly calm and controlled, without any pity. "Did you really think it would be that easy to sneak into my Death Egg, bat?" the voice sneered in contempt.

Rouge carefully opened her eyes, blinking frequently to clear her vision. She was now on the bottom level of the room, in one of the few spaces between the consoles. The floor was extremely cold against her body, and she could see the end of pincers around her throat and arms, presumably from whatever was holding her. Just one bite would be enough to kill her… and the person capable of ordering the end of her life was right there.

The towering figure stared down at her, the light glinting off his glasses. His arms were folded, and he made no moves whatsoever. He was like a predator, cruelly waiting for the prey to make the first desperate action that would lead to a long death. Rouge could see the reflection of her face in his glasses, her white face staring out of the tinted blue abyss.

The massive creature loomed closer to her frail form, his boots clicking on the metal. She was in a sitting position, and those boots looked heavy and powerful, more than able to stamp on her and turn her into paste inside her suit. He looked down at her as she curled up her knees away from him, and he smiled. Although she could see his gleaming teeth weren't pointed, it felt like they should be.

"I was expecting more of a fanfare than one simple bat," he said softly. He leaned in close, and Rouge didn't even dare to breathe. His face was nearly touching her own, and Rouge stared at her own reflected eyes in his lenses, complete blackness of the soul behind and in front of her. Rouge shivered in the unnatural cold. She was completely helpless with her arms locked behind her, and the forced sitting position meant she couldn't kick with her legs either. She was entirely at the mercy of someone who would take great pleasure in refusing that mercy.

"You don't know who I am, do you?"

Rouge shook her head quickly. She didn't want to know, either.

He smiled again, and spoke quietly. "Excellent. It's always a pleasure to make new… acquaintances. I'm sure you'll be most forthcoming about yourself as well after sampling my generous hospitality." Without another word, he turned round and began to walk away.

Rouge's eyes didn't even have time to widen as the until now hidden robots hungrily closed in on her.

* * *

…

…ow.

His back felt like someone had torn off all his spines one by one, taking special care to stretch each one slowly until it wetly snapped off and flapped in the breeze. It hurt to breathe, his chest pressing against a thousand knives every second when he did so, all piercing into the very depths of his lungs and heart, and then twisting in his flesh. A lone bead of sweat rolled down his face, over his left eyelid before falling with a plop onto the floor. His entire left side was burning horribly, and the pain was still mounting.

Sonic didn't have the luxury of waiting for it to fade, though. Who knew when that vicious red guy would come down to find him, and take his sweet time finishing the job of killing him? Or even worse, if he was found by the Badniks, and taken before the Doctor himself? Sonic had seen the innumerable cages and prisons the Doctor had on board the Death Egg, and his heart rate leapt in terror at the thought of being locked in one of them, awaiting experimentation.

Sonic forced his eyes open, wincing as he did so. The sunlight immediately blinded him, and he screwed them shut again, waiting until he could actually look without sizzling his pupils. The hedgehog then carefully turned his head, his neck cracking as he looked at his surroundings.

The grass was a glorious shade of dark green, spreading thickly over the ground as an unending blanket of natural carpet. When it hit the trunks of the majestic tall trees the grass was replaced by moss, which wove itself around the brown wood like a lover. Dotted around in a beautiful wash of colour there were incredible flowers and bright plants, every colour of the rainbow and then yet more, soothing his vision by merely gazing upon their glory. The soft yellow light of the benevolent sun lent a feeling of peace to the entire area, and Sonic felt the pain in his body decrease as the light smiled on his wounds.

Levering up on his elbow, Sonic gritted his teeth. He sucked in his breath sharply at the burning lance drilling into his side, letting it out just as quickly as he rocked on his lower arm. Back and forth, back and forth, enduring the sharp pains that wracked his body, Sonic built up his momentum. When he had enough he flipped himself over onto his hands and knees, and waited for the swathes of blackness in his vision to go away. After a few hoarse gasps of breath, the hero of Mobius rose to his feet, and shivered as his limbs tingled with life once again.

_Right. Now to find Tails before that guy gets him, and finish off the Doctor once and for all. He will pay for what he did…_

Vengeance had always been high on Sonic's priorities, but his friends had slowly replaced this desire with themselves as the top of his list. As a result, the Sonic of today was a lot more approachable than the young one that had completely smashed the Scrap Brain Zone to dust, and nearly destroyed the Little Planet with a certain Amy Rose still on it.

Later in his life, Sonic would not recall when the change had happened, but now he was much more a hero and a friend than he was before. So rather than heading straight towards the smoke he could see above the trees, Sonic picked the direction he thought he last saw Tails heading in as he fell, and jogged off into the undergrowth, hiding his lingering limp with a quick skip on each foot and a determined grimace on his dirt-stained muzzle.

* * *

The Marble Garden had once been a great city of the echidna civilisation, towering stone buildings and carved roads reaching in all directions. In its heyday, one might have seen the structures glowing a deep brown and silver-white in the heat of the sun, with splashes of green as the gardens overflowed with colour. Now though, it was a forlorn place, abandoned and left to the ravages of nature in its full tempestuous force.

Trees clawed their way into the sky, using the prideful ancient stonework as their ladders and platforms, and damp moss and coarse grass ran rampant in the streets, covering the beautiful mosaic tiles and decorated walls. It so happened that in their history, the echidnas had saw fit to leave the city, and install deadly traps in place of its citizens. The exact reason was unclear even to the Guardian of the island, but whatever had happened, it was wrathful, and had taken no prisoners of the urban environment.

But look. There is life inside the barren place yet. It would be called fleeting life, but this life is one of the few to which time leaves no marks.

A figure slowly walked out of the undergrowth, taking his time to be silent in his steps. He stopped, and looked around, very carefully. After satisfying himself that there were no eyes to see him, he walked back into the plants for a moment and came out hoisting a giant green emerald in his arms. Even though the thing was huge, it was surprisingly light, as if the entire thing was hollow.

The green of the glowing gem clashed horribly with the brightness of the jungle, and as the jewel left its brief hiding space, a whisper of wind sounded that could almost have been a sigh of relief. Something had changed within the Master Emerald. Something for the worse.

Without any effort, the figure carried the Master Emerald across the short clearing and found a bit of shade between two overgrown stone buildings. He set the jewel down between the light grey constructs, and regarded it through one piercing red eye. He could sense the energy flowing from the jewel in powerful green waves, hindered not by mere stone or indeed, his body. He simply watched the jewel pulsing for a minute, wondering why he felt such a powerful urge to keep it with him.

It clearly didn't do anything other than sit there. It was of no practical use to him, yet here it was, with him, he having carried it through the jungle for no apparent reason. He frowned suddenly. He realised he couldn't remember doing it. In fact, there was precious little he could remember, besides waking up in that dark, eerie pit of machinery… and then being here right now. This was not right.

He walked away from the Master Emerald, noticing how hard it became with every step, and looked out over the trees, towards the sky. A solid black smudge tore the natural sight of blue sky to green trees, filling it with the smoke from the crackling lather of metallic flames. The ship skulked on the edge of his vision, hiding behind a large, rocky brown mountain that rose nearly through the clouds.

When he had been in that corridor, and the alarms were wailing, he… panicked. Images had assaulted him, blinding his vision with tears as gunshots and screams played in his ears over and over. Phantoms of his past, his memories, they lived there in his mind, and he had seen the ghosts murmur as they passed. There was running, running away from someone… something, and then there was fear, and then there was death. He had wanted out, and then, all of a sudden, he was here.

He turned back to the giant translucent gem, and stared into its reflective depths. Everything beyond the emerald had a slight green tint, as if…

…As if it was poisoned. He reared back, retching at the energy waves that burst forth like a heartbeat in all directions. It was poison to him?

Well then, it wouldn't do it for much longer. He bared his teeth, pure vampiric white, and raised his lower arms from his sides so that they were in front of him, palms up. In this position he then clenched his fists, and growled in his throat. This was a stance he instinctually knew for gathering power. His cuffs, red, black and gold, began to glow a dark and venomous crimson, and he felt the heat of chaos building inside his black-furred skin.

"You…" he spat. "You thought you could repress my memory?" He remembered now; the jewel had _forced_ him into this bond. It had claimed he would not remember it. The repressive energy it held was the polar opposite to his own, green to red. There was a flash of blue in his eyes, the rush of water in his ears, and yellow eyes looked out at him from the depths of the Master Emerald.

"So it all starts with this… a jewel containing the ultimate power…"

* * *

**S: ...and if that last line didn't make it obvious, I don't know what will. With any luck, the beginning of the second chapter makes slightly more sense now, and I hope you enjoyed this long overdue third chapter of questionable quality. Hope to see you at the fourth one, which should be up a lot quicker.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	4. Chapter 4

**S: Hello again. I'm not too sure about this chapter, I think I've mixed something up somewhere, but I can't find it. I found writing the second scene here extremely awkward, so I kinda went nuts with the third scene to make up for it. I think I went just a bit overboard and made the scene a great big flop.**

**Hope you enjoy, anyway.**

* * *

Jogging through the green jungle, Sonic hadn't come across anything really spectacular since the trees closed over him. He didn't know how long he'd been in this jungle at all, the unchanging landscape destroying his perception of time. Not to mention how long he must've lain unconscious on the mossy roots.

It was just endless green; the foliage stretching out as far as his weary eyes could see… which wasn't very far, as they were continuously blocked by enormous leaves, which seemed to have been grown specifically to block his way. The air was hot and humid, pressing down on his lungs as he breathed, and each plant he had to touch was dripping with sticky moisture, instantly staining the hedgehog's fur.

Sonic could feel his legs building up with tense pressure, his heart rate quickening uncomfortably. While he had expected it to be wet and sticky, and smelling vaguely of nothing in particular as the vastness of the scents and humidity shut down his nose, he had not expected the silence.

The only sounds were those he made himself. His damp breathing echoed all around him, bouncing back from imagined ears that were not friendly. Everything _stared_ at him, listened to every breath, saw every movement, felt his mounting fear and desire to run. Sonic felt the enormous push of his body wanting the wind, to feel the air rushing past as anything dangerous was left far behind in his dust cloud. The jungle crushed his spirit of freedom, and to the hedgehog of speed, it was painful.

_I HATE this place. When will this jungle end?_

As he had pushed another giant bounty of nature out of his way, he saw him. The red-furred guy with the dreadlocks was right _there_, facing away from him towards a narrow wooden bridge overlooking a giant waterfall. Sonic blinked; he hadn't heard the sound of the water at all. As he looked up, the top of the waterfall was just barely visible as a peak far above, the sunlight glinting from the water's surface as it plummeted downwards. Following the liquid's path of descent, Sonic could see as the water simply disappeared into white mist, swallowed up by the sheer drop. He shivered. It must be very deep for the sound and sight of the powerful water to just disappear.

The red guy moved. Sonic was filled with the instant urge to attack, to fight, to _get him_. But he held his ground, as while nothing was as fast as him, the guy was now walking onto the bridge itself, and so the arena of their battle would be uncomfortably similar to the wings of the Tornado.

_No thanks. It'll be on my terms, red._

The guy strode across the bridge without a care in the world, muscled arms swinging slightly to support the massive gloved hands. Sonic knew the strength in those limbs was incredible; when he had been grabbed on the Tornado, it was like being held by a ton of rock. The guy was built like a mountain, looming, large and strong, possessing incomparable might. Sonic was the embodiment of the wind, fast and free, but forced to travel around the mountain rather than through it. He was only too aware of the meaning of that.

There was a hard thunk every time the guy's shoes hit the wet brown wood of the bridge. Sonic looked at them and his eyes widened; they were made of metal! Red and yellow on the top only served to enhance the solid grey steel on the soles, thumping on the bridge as if they would smash through at any moment. Miraculously they did not, and the guy had soon crossed the bridge, disappearing into the jungle beyond.

As satisfying as it would be to exact revenge, Sonic knew he was at a disadvantage. His best chance would be to play the spy, quietly following his enemy until a suitable arena presented itself. With this in mind, Sonic sneaked out of the undergrowth and stepped onto the bridge. His shoes made a barely heard click as they hit the wood underfoot, unlike the earthquakes his prey made. This would be easy.

As Sonic got closer to the middle of the bridge, what he was doing suddenly struck him. He looked down through the planks of the ever so thin and fragile bridge, and now he was over it, he could hear the relentless rumble of water assaulting rocks very, very far below. The fall didn't terrify Sonic so much as what was waiting at the bottom. Would it be a horrific splash into a terrifyingly deep lake, or a crushing impact against jagged rocks? He knew which one he would prefer.

_The rocks, any day. At least it would be quick._

"Ahem."

Sonic froze. The voice had come from behind him. And he didn't recognise it.

"A smart person would have left by now. But you're obviously not very clever, making as much noise as a crying puggle."

The hedgehog's spines flared in anger. Sonic did not take kindly to insults, even if he had no idea how he was being insulted. He pivoted slowly on his heels, turning around to face the direction he came from. It was impossible, he had just seen him cross the bridge and disappear!

Disappear…

The once red fur of his opponent was now stained a deep crimson by the assault of the humidity, but that did not distract from the triumphant grin he held in his sneering face. Sonic glared into the purple eyes of the spiny _thing_, and wanted nothing more than to run back across the bridge and punch him, if only to get that smug look off his face. How in the world had he managed to sneak up on him? He was Sonic the Hedgehog!

…And he had walked right in the middle of a trap. He could try and run over there and spindash that guy's face to hell and back, but he suspected the bridge wouldn't hold if he ran across it. And then there was the extremely ominous switch that his grinning opponent was standing next to, formerly hidden under an inconspicuous pile of leaves. Sonic's stomach dropped.

_Uh oh…_

"I'd like to see you survive this fall, hedgehog… I am told you go out of your way to avoid water. How convenient for me."

"How do you know that?!" Sonic spluttered. Only Tails and Amy knew that…! And… and…

_Robotnik._

Just how long had he been unconscious? Had the Doctor already taken over the Island? Where was Tails? And just who was this guy who seemed to know so much and be so unstoppable?

"How… how do you… who are you anyway?"

The other's face darkened, crimson spines hanging dead from his skull, unmoving. His gaze reached into the hedgehog like claws, slashing at his eyes with their twin drills of hatred and disgust as the rumble of the foamy waterfall became the only sound in the jungle. Sonic met his gaze with one of his own, his eyes narrowing and his body tensing for the inevitable fight. Neither combatant breathed, simply staring into each other's eyes, judging, and waiting.

Robotnik's face came into Sonic's mind at that moment, a disgusting grin smeared across his vile features. "You will never bother me again, hedgehog," he taunted. "You were foolish to think you could ever kill me…"

Slowly, the dreadlocks moved as the guy turned his body, repositioning himself into a ready pose to push the switch. Sonic's muscles screamed at him to run, to jump, _anything_ to get away from the threat of… _water_.

"I am Knuckles the Echidna, the Guardian of the Sacred Master and Defender of Angel Island. You are Sonic the Hedgehog, scourge of the land and my enemy." Without breaking his gaze, Knuckles held out his palm. A blue gem materialised in it with a hiss that made Sonic shudder. "I will not allow you to steal the Chaos Emeralds from their rightful resting place. You shall never again use them to obtain your blasphemous power."

Knuckles stamped on the switch, sending the bridge plummeting into the cloudy abyss, the fragile wood quickly being absorbed into the distance. But Sonic was not there anymore.

Knuckles' eyes went wide. The emerald was gone! With instincts honed by years of practice, he turned round in the blink of an eye and dived forward, managing to grab the fleeing hedgehog by one of his rapidly disappearing feet. With an animal cry of pain, Sonic fell face forward into the dirt, landing hard. Spitting out mud, he writhed in the echidna's grip, determined to break free of him. While normally it would have been a battle lost before even beginning, the echidna's lack of a stable foothold on the slippery leaves meant that the wriggling hedgehog was keeping him off balance.

"Get off me!" Sonic squirmed, unable to get the momentum and balance needed for a spindash to escape the echidna's strong clutches.

The echidna snarled at the impudence of the blue beast. His mere existence was an insult to the island, and therefore to him. Switching tactics, he swung Sonic instead, lifting him off the floor to fly around in a circle with Knuckles holding onto his foot. Sonic yelled in agony as the spinning force began to separate the bones of his leg from the rest of his body, and then the pain sharply increased for a moment before fading completely.

Sonic sighed in relief, his eyes closed as he flew through the air. And then continued to fly. But that could only mean…

His eyes snapped open just in time to see a red dot disappearing into the distance as he fell into the great chasm.

As the scream reached him, Knuckles smiled as he caught his breath, kneeling on the edge of the drop. There was no way that the hedgehog would survive the Zone below, even if he lived through the fall. The Doctor had spoken the truth about him; Knuckles had seen the loathing in his eyes as they looked at one another. Such evil could never be allowed to hold the power of Chaos ever again.

It had taken a lot of effort to change the trajectory of the spin enough to throw the hedgehog down the pit, but it was worth it by far in order to protect the Chaos Emeralds…

And then the Guardian realised who still had the emerald.

* * *

As he looked at the screens, filled with information and possibilities, the half-shadowed figure could not suppress a smile. His moustache glowed in the semi-darkness, infused with the green light of the statistics in front of him. Despite everything that had happened, everything he had worked for and everything that had been destroyed repeatedly, his luck never failed to give him one last card to play.

Several actually, if he was correct.

Doctor Robotnik toiled inside the metallic shell of this lonesome room, onboard his greatest creation. It was purposefully kept dark in here at all times, just so that the most valuable object in the room could be illuminated. Robotnik sometimes felt the need to be dramatic and flashy, but he never did it at the expense of functionality, and this was no different.

The screen showed him incredible things, things he would have thought impossible were he not so enlightened. His Death Egg had survived the fall to Mobius by not actually hitting it at all, but instead landing (being caught?) by an impossibly large, _floating_ island in the sky.

To think that he would have no idea how it was possible if not for that invading bat! She had very obligingly told him of the island, when… pressed for it, and he had found the information most intriguing.

_The Master Emerald…_

That was what she had called it; the jewel that somehow kept this magnificent exception to gravity afloat. Robotnik had spent a lot of time gathering the Chaos Emeralds for the exact same purpose, to raise his Death Egg, but this emerald could do it alone?! The sheer power it must possess made his mind fill with equations, strings of impossible numbers passing by his eyelids.

If he had this 'Master Emerald' there would be no need for the Chaos Emeralds anymore. If the Master could make this island float by merely sitting upon it, then it would be a far less dangerous solution to his problems than tampering with Chaos Control again. That had spectacularly backfired in space, when that infernal hedgehog had somehow used the power to make himself invincible.

No, the Master Emerald would be a far better solution.

After the bat had told him everything she knew, about the emerald as well as its guardian, he had decided to set her free. He impressed upon her what a wise course of action it would be for her to find the Master Emerald and bring it back to him, at which point he would remove the tracker he had placed in her blood. The bat had been more than happy to agree to this partnership, given the alternative, but the Doctor was not fooled; he would have to watch her carefully.

The echidna, on the other hand, was quite different. Showing nothing of common courtesy to a crashed space station, he had barged in, smashing every Badnik in sight and demanding he return the Master Emerald and leave at once. Or so he had, until Robotnik had used a few choice words to throw the Guardian off balance, one word being said title, as well as 'most noble echidna' and 'I have come to return the Chaos Emeralds to their rightful place'. _That_ had stopped the fool in his tracks completely.

_"How do you know of them?!"_

"_I have considered it my duty for many years to return the Chaos Emeralds to their rightful place at the side of the Master. I am at your service, Guardian." Robotnik bowed, eager to display this attitude as a friend rather than an enemy._

_Knuckles stuttered, unused to an attack of such cringe-worthy servility. Everyone he had ever known had been proud and strong, much like him. This attitude was something completely alien to him, which Robotnik leapt upon immediately, not allowing the Guardian any moment to collect himself._

"_I had managed to gather all seven to my home, this place you stand in now, and I was trying to use them to find you here, but before I could complete my goal I was attacked by a blue hedgehog." Robotnik had no need to force emotion into the last few words, as his spat them out into the air. Knuckles' eyes had clouded over, as by strange coincidence he had met such a hedgehog earlier, attempting to gain entry to the island with his companion._

_The Doctor had not been idle, as the bat had left. His Badniks had already sent back images of the elusive Hidden Palace, with its extremely fascinating carvings and mosaics, and as such he was able to give his words weight by using this information. As a final touch, Robotnik described the invincible form of the hedgehog as he used the emerald's power to destroy his home, forcing it to crash onto the holy Angel Island itself._

The story was pretty poor by his usual standards, but fortunately for the Doctor the echidna had encountered the hedgehog before, and had already marked him down as an enemy, so he accepted the story rather quickly, even if it was still with some reservations.

The echidna had been unable to sense the Master Emerald within the station, because of course it was not there, further supporting the Doctor's story. The two of them had discussed the best course of action, and eventually it was decided that they would search for the Chaos Emeralds, both to stop them from falling into Sonic's hands, and to make the search for the Master easier.

So by no small amount of luck, and some prior knowledge, Robotnik had managed to convince two different people to find him the items he needed, without either of them knowing of the involvement of the other. And to top it off, the Guardian of the island had put Sonic out of action already. The Doctor would have to tread carefully, but for now, things seemed to be all in his favour.

Except for one thing…

He turned from the screen, suddenly becoming disinterested in it. His eyes fell upon the vast cylinder in the centre of the room, lit from above by a red light. The red light and the black shadows had been somehow appropriate for this room, and it was all to do with its most recent occupant besides him.

The Doctor had no memory of his life before being here, in this world where there were no others of his kind. His earliest experiences were of looking upon a cylinder identical to this one, his mind filled with blank nothingness where his memory should have been. Those early moments had been suffocating, his thoughts going in panicked circles as he found no answers to any question.

_Where am I?_

_Who am I?_

_What do I do?_

He shuddered at the visions of his younger self, staring at everything, knowing nothing, being nothing.

Over time some things had come back to him, chiefly being knowledge of technology. He had no idea where he learned this from; sometimes he would simply wake up one morning knowing things he did not know before. He had hated the irregularity of these jumps in his knowledge, and had tried ever since to find out everything he could about the past that eluded him so. And then he had found this.

He had quickly discovered that the cylinder was designed for some sort of suspended animation, and although the one he had presumably come from had been destroyed long ago by a certain hedgehog, he knew that this one was identical. But unlike him, this occupant had never woken up, and had just lain there, sleeping. Robotnik had studied him ferociously, aware that this was his greatest chance for finding out the truth, but no matter what he did, he could not make him wake up. The sleeper, a black and red hedgehog, had stubbornly refused to respond to anything he did.

That didn't mean Robotnik hadn't learned things. His notes on Chaos Control had been born directly from studying the strange hedgehog, but aside from smashing the glass and forcibly yanking him out, which Robotnik had been disinclined to do, nothing seemed to affect him enough to wake him.

But now…

Robotnik drummed his fingers on the computer console, his brow furrowing, the blue lenses of his glasses hiding his narrowing eyes.

…he was gone.

The glass had opened, its old hinges holding up the transparent threshold from the interior of the chamber. The hedgehog was gone without a trace, and Robotnik had no idea where he had gone. From what he knew, the hedgehog was very attuned to the mysterious power of the emeralds, and Robotnik could guess at who just might have taken the Master.

But for now he had more pressing matters, and turned back to the screen, formulating his plans of action and ensuring that the Death Egg would be ready when it was given a new power source, no matter what it happened to be.

* * *

Sonic screamed as he fell. He could not see anything at all; his vision blocked by walls of white mist, and all he could hear was the laughter of the waterfall as it held out its arms towards him in his imagination. The arms reached out to him, the sadistic grin relishing the opportunity to smother him completely. Sonic screamed again, arms and legs flailing as he tried desperately to escape his fate.

Then the water took him, crushing him with the impact, and colours blinded his vision as the liquid eagerly rushed to attack his eyes. It squirmed into them, filling his head with stabbing pain as his air gave out, allowing more water to cram into his mouth and nose, violently tearing down the walls of his lungs in their quest to claim him as a corpse.

Sonic twisted in panic, seeing nothing and feeling the water ripping and tearing at his life with teeth of cold steel. He tried in vain to close his mouth, being met with a hard slap of water as it punished him for even thinking he could escape. It forced itself into him, pushing his lungs outwards with the sheer volume of the purposeful, evil substance as it also clenched him in its fist, squeezing his ribs from the outside. The sound of deep rumbling in his ears from the surface was mocking to him, before the water decided to destroy another one of his senses.

Sonic faced an eternity of blackness, unable to feel beyond pain, see beyond his imagination and breathe anything but suffocating water. It was impossible to tell how deep he was, but Sonic thrashed in desperation, hoping to hit the blessed oxygen and deny his killer any satisfaction. But it was not to be so.

No matter where his blind body turned, everywhere seemed the same, laughing liquid pressing itself further into him as if everywhere was deeper into its clutches, and there was no surface at all. The water filled his stomach, painfully bloating it inside him as yet more of the liquid searched for places to go to cause him death.

Suddenly Sonic was wrenched to the side, his stomach vainly attempting to push out the water by vomiting, only to have it rush back in again more powerful than before. He turned over and over in the current, dragging him down to the dark depths where the agony became excruciating, everywhere filled with freezing pain of the crushing deep.

The water pushed even more, building and bleeding inside his head and body until he finally burst, letting the vile water consume him entirely, his resistance futile and fleeting, his life forfeit.

The water became warm, and Sonic opened his mouth to scream for the final time when he suddenly breathed in precious air. Wondrous _air._

Sonic couldn't see or hear, but he could feel the glorious oxygen flow through him, around the toxic water to give him new strength. His knees hit something and he threw out his hands, feeling them land on solid ground. The water receded from him as he knelt there on the newfound land, shaking uncontrollably.

He drew in another hoarse breath, and his stomach wrenched, throwing up everything onto the miraculous surface that had caught him. The heated bile flew from his mouth and nose, landing with a splat on the cold floor, and uncaring, Sonic the Hedgehog fell forward into his own fluids and lay there, curled up and shivering in hydrophobic relief.

* * *

**S: Well that wasn't over the top at all, was it? I'm sure it's obvious where Sonic's ended up, and with any luck this chapter was interesting, and not ridiculously crap.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	5. Chapter 5

**S: Happy will I be on the day where I can say 'Yes. I am confident that this chapter is good.' I think I've actually repeated the same mistake I made in the last chapter and made a big long explanation. However, this happened during three rewrites of this thing, so... I'm stuck with it.**

**Please, enjoy.**

* * *

_Grey steel. Cold. Dark. An endless corridor, filled with starlight from the viewing window. Three figures were there, hanging miles above the blue planet filled with life, in a place filled with death. Screams slashed the air into pieces, bursts of metallic projectiles silencing the last cries of the wounded._

"_Go! Now! I'll catch up!"_

_A gasp, and then a female voice pierced his ears. "No! They'll kill you! We're not leaving you behind!"_

"_I'll be fine! They're not after you, and I don't want to see you get hurt!"_

"_But… but…"_

_He turned around, eyeing the two people with him, most of his family. The girl, a blonde haired young human, was mortified at what he had just said, her hands reaching out to him to stop him sacrificing himself to distract their pursuers. The front of her blue dress was becoming stained with tears, and she struggled vainly in the grip of the second person._

_Shadow looked into the eyes of the second, another young human. He stared back wordlessly, restraining the girl as she fought to run over to the hedgehog. Shadow spoke to him softly, his deep voice carrying through the pleadings of the nearly hysterical girl like a knife through soft silk._

"_Take care of her. I'll stop them, and find the professor. You know where the escape pods are."_

_He nodded slowly. His light blue eyes met again with the darkened red of his long time friend's, and the task of protecting the girl passed between them. He spun the girl around and they ran off down the corridor, her cries quickly becoming lost in the cacophony of the explosions and gunfire surrounding the metal space station._

_Footsteps found him, closing in on him with their quick and precise steps. Military boots all running down the corridor, this corridor… towards him. Shadow pulled at his gloves, moving his feet along the metal with a click to change his centre of gravity. He waited for their arrival, his breath showing as misty crystals in the cold environment as the soldiers came into his sight round the corner-_

* * *

Fortunately for Sonic, there were a lot of waterways which weren't in use, so he was able to run down them more than easily, his eyes alert for the end of each one. This careful attitude had come after the suitably unpleasant sensation of having nothing to run on any more all of a sudden, and the hedgehog was anxious to not have a repeat of that. One near death experience was quite enough for him, and he doubted that all the waterways had a convenient platform between him and the sparkling blue.

As his thoughts yet again turned to water, he swallowed. It had been at least half an hour before he could bring himself to let go of the saviour that was a giant water pipe, and open his eyes to take a look around him.

The water lashed out at him as he looked, and although it was simply a small wave, like millions he had seen on the beach, he still scrambled backwards in a panic. This water looked _hungry_, and he had no desire to become its next meal, rotting at the bottom of the deep.

All of the dark brown stone was wet and cold with the loud white spray of churning water, and it was very slippery. Sonic could imagine the squeaks his shoes made when he skidded, unable to actually hear it above the deafening, reverberating echoes.

Sonic spotted the end of the waterway he was on, and scanned his eyes further ahead automatically. There! A large stone structure jutted out of the water like an iceberg, and instantly his green eyes locked onto it, judging the distance. His feet sped along the stone and jumped off in a rush of swirling air.

Sonic sailed easily over the abyss and landed perfectly onto the latest outcropping of unnatural construction. Letting his breath return, he took the opportunity to study his surroundings in more detail.

It was vast, extending all around him, brown stone carving and curling around the rushing blue water as it sped along below. There were many artificial, vaguely cube-shaped islands rising from the current of liquid, bristling with strange gadgets and glass pipes with bubbles in them. The island he stood on was no different from the others, the transparent tubes merrily taking their liquid passengers far above his head and to the ceiling.

Sonic had long ago given up trying to hear anything above the roaring sound of the thousands of tonnes of water blasting its way around him, and the air was old and unused, making the atmosphere slightly damp and musty, filling his lungs with cold shivers.

The ceiling was more than a hundred feet above his head, crawling with water pipes like some sort of hyperactive spider web. Things that weren't brown were blue, and the meeting of these two colours often produced a thick erosive smudge of darker colour that told the hedgehog that this place must be ancient. The entire place was basically a giant tunnel, water going very purposefully in one direction. If Tails were here he would probably find something to marvel at instantaneously, in every direction.

'_Wow Sonic, look at this!'_

'_Did you see that?'_

'_Amazing! It must work through the blah-blah-blah principle, and you can see in these pipes that blah-blah-blah hydrogen something-or-other fast moving supplies!'_

And it was Sonic's job to go '…what?'

Sonic smiled. Tails had always been like that, ever since he'd met him. Despite his irritating monologues on strange things, the fox had always been on hand to pull him out of trouble, indeed that was how they had met in the first place…

But Tails wasn't here now, and it was very conspicuous to the speedy hero, especially as he was surrounded by his mortal fear without his usual lifebelt aka sidekick. Tails was a very good friend and brother.

Sonic wasn't. He'd been very slow to reach out to the kid in possible friendship, often treating him with barely disguised mistrust, and only grudgingly thanking him for taking him into his run down home. But, like Amy, the fox had persevered, eventually gaining smiles and even voluntary conversation from the hedgehog as he warmed to the presence of yet another person around him.

Amy had simply stumbled onto his company in the middle of nowhere, a small child in clothes that looked like rags, but Sonic had still given her something to eat and let her sit by his fire. Ever since… _that day_… the cobalt blue hedgehog had been hostile to strangers, always preferring to be alone, but Amy had somehow managed to stay with him.

In hindsight, it was a good thing she had, or else Sonic would have been dead a long time ago. Same with Tails. He had voluntarily introduced himself to the half-corpse that was Sonic the Hedgehog, and took care of him and Amy until he recovered from his 'adventure' on the Little Planet.

Sonic winced at the memories of how he used to act. He now tried his best to be friendly to people, although it was still much easier, and felt more natural, when he was with his two friends. He could actually seem like a normal person around them, but he was convinced that his smile still looked horribly false.

Until of course, Robotnik was mentioned. Sonic's fingers tightened at the name. If he was involved, all bets were off.

_First things first, Sonic…_

He stopped 'admiring' the rushing water and turned towards his destination. Well, to be honest, it wasn't really a destination; he was simply following the flow of moving blue until he got to somewhere more interesting. The water had to get out somewhere, right? And Sonic would be right there, running out the exit like it was the gateway to paradise.

Sonic ran onwards, navigating gaps and pitfalls with quick jumps and even beginning to enjoy himself, until a careless slip on the wet floor made his heart nearly explode in fear, making him cautious and careful again. Why was it that the usually nice and normal world wanted him to fall to his extremely painful death? First trees, and now giant underground rivers! Could it get _any_ worse?

Something suddenly sounded behind him. A colossal, echoing thump, followed by an ominously rising rumble. Sonic carefully looked behind him, but there was no one there. Nevertheless, something had changed now. Sonic felt the sound of the water subtly alter, as it gave off the overwhelming impression of glancing behind itself and sprinting off with a face drained of colour. As Sonic looked, the current did seem to be getting faster and faster for some reason…

And it was _rising_.

This fact iced up his heart just as the rumble overpowered the regular water sounds, transferring to a tremble in the floor. Sonic's teeth began to chatter with vibration as he stared around, searching for an explanation for this.

_What's happening? What's…_

There was the distinct and horribly unpleasant sound of crashing waves, and Sonic gulped. Nervously, as if that could possibly make a difference, he looked behind him, the way he had come. The air had become stifling and hard to breathe, and the temperature plummeted as the crashing noise came closer and closer.

Sonic the Hedgehog finally commanded his frozen legs to run as the tidal wave became visible in the distance.

* * *

"Doctor, I've found the third emerald."

_"Excellent work, guardian. Soon we will be able to find the Master, and all will be well."_

"And then the island shall return to normal."

Robotnik easily caught the tone in Knuckles' voice, even over the communicator. The guardian's eyes had narrowed as he challenged the human's intentions. Again.

_"…yes. There shall be no more unwelcome guests on your island when this is over. My station will have been repaired by then, and I can take it back to space, where it belongs."_

The echidna was silent. Although he had to be suspicious of everyone he met, he had to admit that the Doctor's efforts were impressive. His small 'Badniks', as he called them, had already extinguished the fires in the Angel Island Zone, and even as he mused about it they were hard at work getting the massive metal craft ready for its departure. They had reminded Knuckles of ants, scurrying around their nest, utterly absorbed in their tasks as the guardian continued his own.

_"What of the hedgehog?"_

Knuckles snapped out of his thoughts, grinning a grin only a being with sharp teeth can do. "I threw him into Hydrocity."

_"Hydrocity?"_

"Yes, the Zone that supplies water throughout the island. I thought it appropriate." Knuckles could imagine the fat man sitting in his overlarge seat onboard his space station, stroking his moustache with a quiet 'hmm'. Knuckles could picture him perfectly, and he could even tell that the Doctor had leaned back in his chair and was more than likely smiling.

_"And how long has it been since you had a 'clean out' of the pipes, as it were?"_

Knuckles could see where this was going. "Open the sluice gate in the north end of Marble Garden."

Robotnik was silent for a moment, and then spoke. _"I like to make sure of these things. That cursed hedgehog has survived many attempts by me to stop him, but I refuse to entertain the chance of his survival so close to the rightful return of the emeralds."_

It made sense to Knuckles. The hedgehog had survived him once already, and there was the question of twice, even with Hydrocity. The guardian held no desire to let the blue furred villain get anywhere near the emeralds. Well… any more of them. But it would be simple enough to pry it from his bloated, drowned carcass after the Hydrocity had been 'cleaned'.

* * *

The door burst open with the force of a hurricane, a horrendous figure with black fur and glinting blue eyes charging into the kitchen.

Amy Rose screamed at the apparition, wielding the first weapon that came to hand, and backed away from the horrific demon. It advanced upon her, yelling at her through its mouth filled with sharp teeth.

"Amy! Have you seen my toolbox?"

"_Tails?!_"

"Yeah it's me! I need to repair the-"

"_How many times have I told you not to do that?_"

"Umm… lots?"

Amy breathed out slowly, letting her heart rate come down from quadruple digits. This was a usual situation in the house, actually, but Amy was never prepared for the fox to come in at a hundred miles an hour, stained in oil and grease, yelling about things she didn't understand and often brandishing a spanner.

Amy was a young hedgehog girl, just over two feet in height and sporting pink fur. For some unfathomable reason she also chose to wear a bright red dress which flared out towards the end, and red and white striped boots which did not exactly complement her overall pink colour scheme. She also wore white gloves with thick golden rings around her wrists, and like all female hedgehogs had spines hanging from her head like miniature dreadlocks rather than on her back like males, and had three bangs on her forehead.

Judging by Tails' flashy entrance she surmised that the plane had crashed again, and that things hadn't gone exactly as planned.

"Where's Sonic?" she asked the fox.

"That's the problem! I need to repair the Tornado so I can get back up to the island and help him! I think he might be hurt and Robotnik isn't finished off yet and…"

"What island? What's going on?"

"The island in the sky! I think the plane's busted real bad and I need to…"

"In the sky?"

"Yeah, weren't you listening? I'll need to go get my stuff and head back there because I think I'll have to replace…" The fox ran past her and into his workshop, where the sounds of various gadgets being moved about drowned out the rest of his words.

Moving into Tails' house had been an enormous culture shock to Amy, who wasn't used to having no schedule other than 'get up at some point in the day'. Her life before she met Sonic and Tails had been almost regimental and very strict, and it was a notably different girl that had stammered out her name towards the unforgiving green eyes of a certain cobalt blue hedgehog.

Amy realised she was still holding up a spoon defensively, and put it back on the bench with a sigh. The girl had quite impressive skills with blunt melee weapons, but not even she would stand much chance armed with a small piece of cutlery. She much preferred to use her enormous Piko Hammer as her weapon of choice, and many were the times when people had said 'Where the _hell_ do you keep that thing?'. Amy knew, but she didn't like to dwell on such painful memories.

When Robotnik had resurfaced after the Little Planet incident with his Wing Fortress airship, Amy had not wanted to go anywhere near it. The sight of the enormous ship, filled to the brim with Badniks and cannons that could disintegrate you from miles away had filled her with fear, and so she had been left behind when Sonic and Tails took the Tornado to meet it. There hadn't been a force in the world that could've stopped Sonic from going there as soon as his eyes saw it, and Tails had wisely told him that the plane was ready for it. It hadn't been, which was why it was shot down, but Sonic was not the kind of hedgehog to take no for an answer when it concerned someone he really wanted to kill.

The two children Sonic spent his time with had learned long ago not to mention the name 'Robotnik' within earshot of the blue one, unless they intended to be a thousand miles away for the next week. It was something that was just not talked about when Sonic was around, much like nobody talked about Amy's hammer.

But as soon as the hedgehog and his little brother had left, Amy had been alone again, and it was awful. Tails had come back with the plane, and because Sonic was still on this strange floating island, there was a spare seat. Amy nodded to herself, and walked into the workshop.

* * *

_-as the soldiers came into his sight around the corner. Guns were raised, orders were shouted, and Shadow leapt into the fray._

The scene changed.

_A scream. Shadow heard it overpower all other sounds. He strained his ears, and somehow managed to hear the infinitesimal click of a trigger being pulled, milliseconds before the bullet would fly out and burst through innocent flesh and bone. He ran into the room and-_

And then there was nothing.

* * *

**S: Well, I hope that was good. You may notice that quite a lot of stuff happened before this story, which I haven't wrote about. I plan to someday.**

**By the way, I have an excuse for this chapter not being up sooner! (audience gasps) Yes indeed! As I was about to upload this collection of words you see before you, my internet connection decided to go on a holiday. I was quite miffed, and had to spend a long time fixing the stupid thing, so there you go. Blame the internet. XD**

**Oh, and according to proper fanfiction etiquette (so I am told) the reader who guesses the identity of the third person in Shadow's scene gets a metaphorical cookie! Come on, I have given clues, you know.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	6. Chapter 6

**S: Why hello there good people. I expect you're wondering why it's been so long since I updated. Long story short, it simply took me ages to write this. **

**Oh, and I did do something instead of this, so that counts for something. Another story called 'The Tethered Moon' was what I put up while wrestling with this thing, and it's a prequel to this, so I don't know, you might be interested in it.**

**I have been assured that this is quite good, contrary to my own beliefs, so without further ado, please, enjoy.**

* * *

_-He ran into the room and saw the soldier. Even though the darkness made the soldier indistinct, Shadow could see the shining silver of a weapon in the black expanse. It was pointed directly at the girl._

_The other young human, thrown against a console, yelled in vain at the soldier._ "_No!"_

_The gun fired. The sound blasted throughout the room, reverberating around the uncaring steel and shattering Shadow's heart where he stood. The girl was thrown backwards by the force of the bullet thumping into her chest, blood already spraying through the musty air…_

WHAM!

Someone smashed into his chest, crushing his ribs and forcing the back of his head to the stone with a splitting crack. Hissing penetrated Shadow's ears as a heavy weight nearly broke his jaw, twisting his neck back.

But to Shadow, the physical pain was nothing compared to the mental pain of memory, and he swung his own fist through clenched eyes where he thought the attacker's head would be.

He heard a grunt as his fist connected, and the pressure on his torso vanished. Shadow sucked in air gratefully and opened his eyes, seeing glorious blue sky.

_Like her dress…_

Someone growled, very close to him.

All of the memories vanished abruptly, and Shadow leapt up. The sky was still blue, the aged monuments still crumbling under the march of nature, and the air was pure and cool, not old and musty. His heart thumped in his bruised chest and his head ached with pain, but his senses were not clouded.

He turned his eyes to his attacker, and was taken aback. It was a hedgehog, a one with blue fur and red shoes. He stood on one knee, seething through his teeth as he held the side of his face in a white-gloved hand. His ragged breath was the only sound in the square, and the two hedgehogs were less than five feet away from each other.

The blue hedgehog was dripping wet, and smelled awful, like he had dove headfirst into a sewer. Shadow could feel his own fur slowly clog with scummy water from the momentary contact, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. As he watched, trickles of water began to run through the flagstones, pooling and congealing. The blue hedgehog seemed oblivious to the terrible stench of the liquid, staring up at Shadow.

For that was what had disturbed the black one so. The sheer loathing in the green eyes of his attacker was compounded by his clenched teeth and shaking hands as he focused everything on shrivelling Shadow's soul with his gaze alone. His stare was horribly similar to what Shadow had seen in the eyes of soldiers: pure hate.

"You should not _exist_," the blue one hissed. "Copy…"

"Copy?" shot back Shadow. "I am no copy! You have _no idea_ what I have suffered!"

For some reason, this enraged the other hedgehog. He stood back up, staggering slightly, and pointed his finger accusingly at Shadow. "You think you're so _special?_ That you would know how _I_ feel? A _robot_ like you, _another_ copy of _me_... you have no _idea_..."

"I have been through more than you will EVER know! You… you… you think you…" Words failed the black hedgehog as images of bloody execution flashed before his eyes, his family falling to the ground.

The blue hedgehog screamed. He threw back his head and roared into the heavens above, destroying the fragile quiet of nature with his sorrow. "NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND! EVER!" He stabbed his finger at Shadow as if his emotions could impale him. "ESPECIALLY NOT A ROBOT!"

With the cries of startled birds as his audience, Shadow charged forward across the slowly flooding square, intent on a fight to the death. To have your family die before you… no one could understand that, especially not this loathsome blue hedgehog.

What could he know?

* * *

Rouge hated being watched. It always gave her a horrible feeling down her spine, knowing that unknown eyes were focusing. Her imagination always pictured dark red irises in the blackness, forever behind her head even as she turned around. No substance, no noise… only eyes, watching, and waiting.

She shivered in the air, rebalancing her wings as she trembled. Although the feeling deep inside her could be excused this time, for it was not mere superstition. After the extremely pleasant chat with the fat man, one of those insufferable tin cans had injected her with something. The doctor had smiled down at her, showing those white teeth to their fullest extent, as he explained almost cheerfully that it was a tracking device that would remain with her until he decreed it be taken out.

And so it was that she had agreed to find the Master Emerald, and give it to him, in exchange for her freedom.

_Fat chance of that happening._

It was not the first time Rouge had had such a pleasant chat with someone while being ever so politely escorted through their home, and she suspected it wouldn't be the last, either. But she knew more than enough to double-cross a double-crosser, and since he needed that green jewel so much, she figured he wouldn't mind her changing the terms, once the ball was in her park. Woe betide the metal minion that sneaked up on her a second time.

The batgirl sighed, still gliding through the wind above a large forest. It was a veritable sea of trees, each overlapping the other in the silent war that plants wage under the noses of animals. They gently ruffled as the breeze touched them, the sound relaying itself to the thief's ears with pinpoint accuracy.

Rouge wasn't very skilled at air combat, being reasonably slight of built and therefore not heavy enough to destabilise an opponent. She had picked up a few things though, namely to always pay attention to the breeze on the trees, because it signalled which way the Guardian would come from. The bat had nearly had a heart attack when his impossibly airborne body came out of the blue for the first time, trying to ram her to the floor. He always attacked her from downwind, presumably to hide his scent, and so Rouge had got used to staring downwards as she flew, wings outstretched and limbs still.

Her ears pricked. There was a sound she hadn't heard before. Someone was screaming. There was one of those inaudible hushes following the tormented sound, as every creature in the forest froze in surprise and fear. Rouge twisted in the air, unclipping her emerald tracker from her belt, and glanced at the readout.

As soon as her warm hand was detected, the machine powered up, the glowing light beaming onto her eyes. The colours waved and danced, like a wriggling child who doesn't want to go in the bath, and Rouge gritted her fangs in annoyance.

_Not again…_

But then the colours straightened for a moment, and even with just that small reprieve, Rouge had seen a strong signal coming straight from the direction of that scream. She grinned, flapping her wings above the forest, and turned towards her destination.

_Heh. Looks like the ball's coming to my side of the court now._

* * *

The two hedgehogs collided fiercely, their spines clashing together in the air as they both rebounded from each other. Quicker than most could see, they jumped again, sharpened bodies slicing the air asunder with matching sonic booms. Stone cracked and buckled under the furious onslaught of the fastest living creatures on the planet, greenery catapulting into the sky at their passing.

Ancient and proud trees fell with wails of ripping bark, falling to crush the teetering stone relics of a long dead society. The Marble Garden, wounded irreparably through the passage of time, was finally destroyed by the battle of the hedgehogs, bleeding and broken, clutching at Angel Island like a forsaken comrade.

Clouds of dirt ballooned into the sky with each booming punch of the fight, drenching the eyes of the onlooker with old and malicious dust, blurring the surroundings. Green trees became white with lying dust before collapsing to the yielding mosaic floors, all the while confusion reigning as to the identity of the attackers. The fighters were mere blurs, one of red and one of blue, flying through the death knells of the historic palaces and colliding in loud shouts of golden friction.

The ground became wet and sludgy underfoot as a leak from the great pipes of Hydrocity flooded over the streets. The ghosts of the past let history repeat, watching with wide eyes as beings of terrible power laid waste to their ancient home, just like others had done thousands of years in the past. Water invaded homes and alleys, inundating plants and stone tiles effortlessly and relentlessly.

Sonic's feet made a wave of splashes as he ran through the ankle deep water. He had barely escaped from that enormous tidal wave in the underground place, only to surface in this abandoned city. And what was the first thing to greet his sodden and twitching body?

_Another robot of me!_

The blue hedgehog had hated it when Robotnik had made a doppelganger of him in the past, the robot known as Metal Sonic. That _thing_ had looked like him and claimed to be like him, but Sonic knew that it could _never_ be like him. The sight of another blue hedgehog, even a metal one, had brought up memories that would take a dozen lifetimes to recover from.

Seeing this other hedgehog had stirred similar feelings in the blue blur upon sight. Sonic could somehow sense him, knowing that he was there. It felt almost the same as what the Chaos Emeralds had done to him, except all localised and concentrated in one place. Somehow Sonic knew on instinct that he was a threat, and was taking steps to eliminate that threat.

_No robot copies of me deserve to exist…_

Something to his left! Sonic tensed his legs and jumped, soaring over the cannoning form of the black hedgehog, whistling through the rent air. His feet, warming upon contact with air, quickly froze up again as Sonic landed back in the water. The drops from the splash landed in his fur, pinpoints of cold serving to heighten his senses. The air was a peculiar mix of old and new, dusty and damp, making his breathing uncomfortable and heavy in his throat.

The black one slammed into Sonic in a full body tackle, and the two of them rolled over and over in the liquid before Sonic kicked free, using his hands to flip himself over just as the black hedgehog lashed out at him again. Sonic swept his foot around in a powerful midair kick aimed at his enemy's head, but he effortlessly ducked it, bringing his fist up to slam into Sonic's gut with force enough to propel him away. Sonic flew through the air, unable to breathe any of it as he rocketed away and landed painfully hard in the shallow water.

Sonic was up again in an instant, droplets careening from his fur as he held his stomach in one drenched glove. He stood there, chest heaving as he considered his tactics. The black hedgehog had not moved, still standing tall in the dusty and flooded street. Neither hedgehog could see very far, the distance becoming murky with the added elements of spilling water and old, collapsing ruins, producing a quiet and deceptively small battleground. The surviving buildings were mere suggestions of shadows in their vision, framing the much deeper impressions of spines in their silhouettes.

The eyes, however, were still shining bright. Red orbs met green, the gaze electrifying over the confining mist. The black hedgehog slowly lifted his foot, and waded gently through the water, progressing around Sonic in a circle. The red eyes reminded the blue one of the hated Metal Sonic, and he repeated his enemy's moves, walking as well in a wide circle.

They both circled each other, still staring into each others quiet eyes, moving no more than was necessary. The slapping sound of the water and their deep and slow breaths were the only noises in the lifeless place. They studied one another like predators study, each waiting for the opening, the weak point, the stumble. And then the kill would come, swiftly and unmercifully.

Shadow was very patient. He stalked through the waves of lapping water, maintaining eye contact with his blue opponent. Waiting for his enemies to make the first move was a common tactic of his in standoffs, and he suspected that in this case, his patience far outlasted his opponent's. Sure enough, the blue furred hedgehog was becoming steadily more agitated, his fists clenching and unclenching, his breathing becoming harder and more distinct. The green eyes began to narrow, and his mouth opened, revealing his sharp teeth.

Shadow stopped. After a sudden moment, the other did the same. Letting a smile spread across his face, Shadow carefully raised his hand up a fraction, palm outwards. A low crackling hum penetrated the mist, growing in intensity with every beat of his blood through his arm.

Sonic's fur stood on end as his enemy moved his hand. He was charging up an attack, but it was something the blue hedgehog had never seen before. It sent shivers through him, the invisible waves of power melting through him as surely as the yellow glow mixed with the mist.

If Sonic had paid closer attention, he might have noticed a rather odd feeling of suction, a pulling from the black hedgehog to him. As it was, he did not, and Shadow as well did not notice the slow but steady stream between them. An oversight that would prove fatal later on.

"This fight ends now… I am Shadow, the ultimate power. Nothing will stand in my way."

"You're right… this fight will end now… as I take your face off with my spines, fake!"

"_Fake_?"

The water rushed into the sky with a resounding boom as Sonic ran forward, at the same time as Shadow yelled two words.

"Chaos… Spear!"

* * *

**S: That's probably the most overused convenient-line-to-end-a-chapter-on in Sonic fanfiction. XD I hope you liked it, despite the wait.**

**...Oh, and due to things that I don't fancy talking about, this story is now on hold. But wait, before you get carried away, I assure you that it won't be for too long. I can't say any dates, but I am not giving up on this story. **

**Thanks for reading!**


	7. Chapter 7

**S: Hi there!**

**...why are you all looking at me like that...? Stop it, it's creepy. I updated, didn't I?**

**So yeah, here's me with a random collection of words for you to read. Please, enjoy.**

* * *

His opponent was flung backwards in a cloak of vicious lightning, impacting hard into a building at the opposite end of the flooded street with a muted boom. He did not scream. The complaints of disturbed water rang through the air as violated stone crashed all around. Without waiting for the dust to settle, Shadow started to run forward to finish off the blue hedgehog, or more likely confirm his demise.

But he didn't get more than two steps before an overwhelming feeling of weakness coursed through him. The water dragged at his legs, forcing him to his knees as his lungs decided to demand his full attention. The Ultimate Life Form's hands splashed into the murky water, trying to prevent his collapse as he retched. All his energy had just _left_ him, how could this happen? Shadow became acutely aware of his limbs running dry of the life giving chaos energy, and he shuddered from the deathly cold. Mere freezing sewer water was _nothing_ compared to this… this… emptiness.

The rings on his wrists and ankles began to glow, puncturing the sodden grey mist and filling his eyes with yellow brightness. Warmth embraced his body again, filling his bloodstream and pouring into his heart and brain. Shadow breathed again, a long, quiet sound, the grey tendrils of his expended breath visible in the dank environment once more.

He slowly returned to his feet, breathing in and out with cautious patience, eyeing the end of the street. Water swirled noisily around his feet, providing a constant tickling feeling as it moved his fur. His red eyes darted around in suspicion, and his ears pricked. Nothing seemed to have changed. The silhouettes of the crumbling ruins were still there in the fog, a collapsed tree lay off to the left forlornly, the air was still thick in his throat with wet dust… the only difference was that the blue hedgehog wasn't with him any more.

He did not scream…

Why?

Shadow's eyes widened in a sudden horrific realization. His back spines shivered invisibly as he stood rooted to the spot, as if someone was watching him from behind. His hands balled into fists as he tried to sense the presence of something that had remained constant for so long that he had stopped noticing it.

The giant green jewel was gone.

His features blurred as he swept round, running back to where he'd left the gem. Despite its malicious intentions towards him, the mere act of resisting its power had given him parts of his memory back. Feeling panic build up inside his chest, the black hedgehog threw his head around the alley, searching for the telltale green glow.

_No!_

He _must_ have his memory back! The yearning for his past life welled up like a boiling geyser, and Shadow ran around the alley, uselessly tapping at the walls as if the emerald had melted into the stone.

_Wait, wait…calm down. It can't be far. _

It couldn't move by itself, so obviously someone had taken it while he was busy with that disgusting blue creature. And everything leaves a trail, especially giant glowing gems of phenomenal power.

After a few moments, a watcher high above could have seen, if they were looking carefully, a crimson blur scything through the flooded city. It was determinedly forging towards the distant mountains, straight as an arrow, and just as deadly.

* * *

The pianist drew back his fingers dramatically, the white glove fabric stretching with the dextrous tension. Surrounded by an air of righteous glee, he thrust down a long forefinger onto a pertinent key. It made a lustrous beeping noise that massaged his ears gently. Another finger of the same hand was pressed into another musical key. A different tone this time, but just as melodic, resounded around the room.

Robotnik sighed, his brown moustache blowing in the current. There was something so relaxing about typing on a keyboard that you made with your own hands. Different images flashed up on the black screen with every press of the keyboard, showing him all the parts of his ship, and the surrounding area. Information about the island, as well as the status of the Death Egg, flowed into the vast memory banks like a raindrop in the sea, joining its brethren in its natural place.

The difference being that the scientist could examine every single raindrop he wished with the press, the oh so simple press, of a key. The wonders of his genius astonished him at times.

The repairs were going well, which was excellent news. His enormous child was capable of flight once more, even if the rebuilding of the structure was not quite completed. Green diagrams indicated that there was an unsightly gash on the lower part of the ship, but fortunately this area was easily repairable in space, and would not hinder the vessel's capabilities to any significant extent.

The engines were completed, waiting for the burst of power to bring them to life. Robotnik smiled, his teeth gleaming a lifeless emerald from the readouts. Now he just had to wait for one of his 'allies' to bring him some colourful stones to infuse much-needed life into the metallic bulk. Satisfied of his Badniks' progress with the Death Egg, he tapped out another tune of binary code to show him how well the bat and the echidna were doing.

Robotnik shifted in his seat as he looked closely at the patterns. Chaos energy was like ripples in a pond; if there were too many sources, all you could see was a mess. The blue eyes, shielded by dark glass, moved around the screen in a slow but steady stare. His fingers drummed on the desk, an unusually natural noise amidst the humming of computerised hearts.

There was one strong signal near the Sandopolis desert, moving at a slow pace. A quick check confirmed that this one was the tagged bat, most likely carrying the Master Emerald, and returning to the space station. Excellent.

His grin died as he saw another strong signal moving to intercept the first one. This one must be the echidna, but why would he…

Of course. If he had multiple Chaos Emeralds, then he would be able to tell, just as Robotnik had done, that there was another strong signal. And by a simple process of deduction would know that it was the Master Emerald… which he had sworn to guard.

The human grunted. This was beginning to get more complicated than he had expected. As he looked at the two readings, he noticed a far weaker one coming from the ancient city. What had the inscriptions called it…? Ah yes, Marble Garden.

Well if no one was going to collect that emerald then his Badniks might as well…

_What?!_

Suddenly the glasses were less than an inch from the screen, his white face a mask of horror. The Badniks in the room skittered at their master's sudden movement, but he paid them no heed.

_No… he couldn't possibly have…_

Robotnik slammed down his hand on the keyboard, and the screen replayed the last moments of a Badnik arriving in the Marble Garden Zone. A spiky ball.

A _blue_ spiky ball.

Ramming straight into it.

Like millions… and millions… of other Badniks before.

Robotnik's free hand clenched into a tight fist, strangling the air. His face reddened and he stood up sharply, throwing the chair across the room to clatter against the far wall. The Badniks shrank back fearfully as the looming man straightened like the wrath of a titan. He stared with such loathing at the image on the screen that it was a miracle the poor device didn't burst into flames.

As he spoke, it penetrated every inch of the room, smothering the metal construction in hatred that only the last human on a planet could ever accomplish.

_"Why… won't… he… DIE…"_

* * *

The proud head turned from side to side, surveying the dry and dusty room. Once this place would have been imposing, filled with valuable artefacts, weapons of all kinds, trophies from war and battle. His eyebrows fell slightly as he sighed. He would have loved to see this chamber in its glory days. His imagination filled the ancient place with golden walls, sunlight shining through strategic windows to illuminate the interior, and most importantly of all, other members of his kind standing with him.

Knuckles remembered why he didn't like the Sandopolis pyramid chambers. But he couldn't afford to be daydreaming now; the Master Emerald was close. He could _feel_ it, feel its cries for him to be by its side. His expression returned to its determined scowl, and he ran forwards into the next chamber, dreadlocks swinging behind him.

As his heavy footfalls echoed through the next room, he jumped. As he sailed over the floor, he wasn't surprised to see it yawn open with a loud creak, exposing the abyss beneath, tipped with bloody spikes. He landed effortlessly at the opposite doorway, and the floor closed up sulkily, denied fresh meat. Knuckles ignored the trap, and hurried onwards.

The next room seemed pretty much like the last one. But instead of jumping, the Guardian crouched instead, pounding along the stone floor in a stoop. Arrows snapped across overhead like moving jaws, seeking to snag those that believed this room was indeed exactly the same as the previous. As the wooden death stopped whistling, Knuckles ran on into an unmarked corridor, the same shade of dull yellow as the rest of the pyramid.

The red echidna swerved around a moving saw as if it was a park bench, and leaned his head to one side to avoid a spiked pendulum. Knuckles smiled when he recalled that most of the blood on the pendulum was on the side that swung _back_, and marvelled at the stupidity of some treasure hunters that had evidently forgotten that elementary fact about swinging objects.

The hard boots echoed around him as he stepped into a vast cavern. This cavern was the power room, for lack of a better term, to describe roaring sand slides. They stretched off into the dark distance, the yellow substance falling into oblivion on either side, ready to power some suitably murderous gadget before being recycled back into the slides again. Across a narrow bridge lay the door, and the echidna walked onto it without the slightest hesitation, patiently walking across the gap.

It was only wide enough to support one person, but then again, only one person had ever needed to use it. Knuckles was the only one who had stepped here for hundreds of years, and he could see his own footprints from years past staining the thick layer of dust. Some footprints were smaller and more closely spaced than the others, those of an exploring child. The Guardian regarded them thoughtfully for a moment.

And in this moment of thought, a dark red blur shot out of the passageway behind him, and without any decrease in speed, knocked him out of the way. It was gone again in less than a second.

Then gravity realised what had happened, and Knuckles disappeared to join the ever-rolling sands.

* * *

**S: Well I hope that was mildly entertaining. I suppose I can now optimistically declare this story 'not on hold anymore'. I plan to get an update put up every fortnight at least, and so... I guess I'll see you then.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	8. Chapter 8

**S: Well... it didn't take me long to break that fortnightly update rule, did it? At least this time I can put it down to the relative complexity of the chapter itself, rather than anything else. I don't know if it'll show when you read this, but writing this was very difficult for me.**

**Please, enjoy.**

* * *

Things were certainly getting complicated. It wouldn't be long before questions would be asked, most likely in an impolitely insistent tone. Physical violence could be involved.

Robotnik stared at the console screen, data scrolling past his reflective lenses, detailing intricacies of the Master and Chaos Emeralds, as well as a map of the Death Egg. Several signals were painted in glowing highlights on different sections of the computer screen, and as surely as his face betrayed nothing, the Doctor's unfathomable mind whirred away.

The bat, and her precious cargo, would be here soon. The echidna had halted for a while in the Sandopolis pyramids, but alas, his strong signal had begun to move once more. If the Guardian made it onboard the Death Egg now, Robotnik would be unable to maintain his deception. His shoulders rose and fell in time with his breathing, but the rest of his body moved not a muscle, keeping him seated like a wraith, bathed in artificial light.

Even worse for his plans was the steady line of unresponsive Badniks throughout the Island, and it didn't take such an intellect as his to see that the destruction of his machines was in a very obvious path. Sonic was on his way to the Death Egg as well.

The control room of the moon-sized space station was almost fully operational again, sensors reaching out their technological tendrils to give a steady pour of information about their surroundings. It would have been beautiful to his eyes, but the Doctor's thoughts were by necessity elsewhere.

As if knowing this, there was a chink of stone on metal. The scientist's head turned, his bulk shifting as his chair swivelled round. The material of his clothes ruffled slightly as he stood, walking towards the reverently placed Master Emerald.

Rouge had stood off to one side of the jewel, as was expected of someone with sharp implements in their vicinity. Her black suit appeared to chafe her, and her chest rose up and down with shallow breathing. She appeared tired; sweat showing its stain on her furred ears and head.

"Here's your prize," she said, managing to sound confident even with a dry throat. "Now I believe we had a deal?" The words were swallowed up by the magnificent space, unfeeling metal absorbing her hope-filled words.

Robotnik was still silent, his expression unreadable, glasses impenetrable. The Badniks, with programmed efficiency, had scuttled around the Master Emerald, and with clicks and whirrs, took it quickly away from the organic life forms, towards the waiting engine room. Only then did the stone like features of the human crinkle into a demonic smile.

"A deal… yes, we had a deal." He turned towards her, towering over her slim form, each of his hands large enough to crush her body in their grasp. Rouge tensed as the man's smile became even more pronounced. She would only have one chance…

And then she glanced up at her escape route, one of the same passageways she had originally beheld this enormous room from, and all thoughts of escape vanished from her mind. The Doctor noticed her sudden surprise at exactly the same time as the remaining Badnik guards became aware of the intruder.

Robotnik span round, eyes piercing the gloom. The silhouette of a hedgehog could be seen imprinted upon the ceiling of the connecting tunnel, casually standing in plain sight, arms folded. As the first syllable of his vile enemy's name rolled off Robotnik's tongue, the human saw the slight hints of mistaken identity… and recognition.

"S…!"

Red eyes beamed from the darkness, looking throughout the entirety of the room, sweeping over each Badnik, each exit and entry point, the tired thief, before finally resting on the Doctor himself. The crimson pinpricks narrowed as they locked gazes with the reflective glass.

Shadow watched as the human's shaking hands of white fabric slowly moved up towards his face, and removed the lenses that shielded him. Light blue met red for the first time in many years. The red eyes widened in shock, and two voices spoke at once.

"Shadow…"

"Ivo…"

Their words flowed through ears, barely registering as breaths of wind, but such things had no meaning in this instant of pure recognition. Across the gap of time, old memories were awakened, visions of forgotten lives exposed.

"It has been…"

"…Too long."

The Badniks hesitated in the act of attacking the stranger. They were smart enough to know the uniqueness of the situation, and hung back for now. Metallic plates slid back again with sliding squeaks, sheathed in mechanical bodies and hanging from wary limbs.

On the console behind the Doctor, the glowing screen was showing another large energy reading entering the ship, identifying it as multiple Chaos Emeralds. The echidna had arrived, and due to Robotnik's unforeseen distraction, there was a very convenient map available showing his entry point, his location, and the location of the engine room, where the Master Emerald now was.

There was also a severe lack of jewel thieves in the room.

* * *

"That's the Death Egg?!" Amy squeaked, her spines blown back by the wind. The small Tornado plane flew up over the edge of the Island again, its hastily repaired innards clunking and spewing unhealthy greying smoke.

The space station looked like something from a nightmare. It clutched at the beautiful island as if gripping a heart in its talons, black claws slitting the rocky flesh with brutal and sadistic efficiency. The long shadow of the metal loomed over all the trees of the forests, shrouding the icecap and the desert in bleak cloaks.

To Amy, it looked horribly like the Little Planet.

A flash of light from the station burned her eyes, and a rumbling sound encroached upon the air, thumping in her ears. With only a slight hint of reluctance, the Death Egg took off, rising lethargically from the volcano. Cracked and wounded pieces of land rained from its underbelly, falling and smashing as they were dislodged from the artificial creature.

"It's taking off!" Amy screamed at the fox pilot in front of her.

"We have to find Sonic!" he responded. Tails' muzzle fur shook as he threw his head out over the side of the aircraft, his blue eyes scanning the green foliage. It was as if he expected Sonic to be standing right there, despite everything.

Tails had told Amy what had happened on the way up, and this was the same part of the forest that Sonic had fell in. The girl put her hands on the outside of the Tornado and lifted herself up, looking out over the expanse of green. How were they supposed to know where he was? That was a _long_ way down. Sonic wouldn't be in a good mood when they found him.

Amy frowned as a thought hit her. She knew that the Death Egg was capable of space flight, and orbit above Mobius. She also knew that the Tornado was not. The sudden revelation of what that meant shocked and frightened her, but she had to tell Tails.

"…We …we haven't got time to rescue Sonic."

"_What?!_" Tails glared at her from in front.

The girl shuddered, her eyes tightly closed and fists clenched. "If he's alright, he's on that… _thing_, and if he's not alright, and he's down there, it could take us ages to find him!"

"_So?_"

"Do you want to be the one to tell Sonic that we let Robotnik get away without so much as trying to stop him?" Amy was staring through Tails now, looking at something unseen, her eyes wide in fear. But after those words, the young fox understood. They shared a vision of the blue hedgehog's likely reaction after they told him that they'd let his hated enemy get away.

Tails was almost certain that Sonic would forgive them. Or at least, he wouldn't be _too_ mad. Maybe. Tails was almost certain. Almost.

He twisted in the seat, focusing his vision on the rising Death Egg. There was a long gash near the bottom of it, caused by the impact against the floating island.

"We can get in through there." Tails struggled over the next words, the syllables thick in his throat. "…We'll come back for Sonic… later…"

Although Tails did have a basic floor plan of the Death Egg, having successfully managed to steal it from one of Robotnik's now abandoned bases, he'd never actually been in it himself. It was fortunate he'd thought to take it with him, and he wordlessly passed it behind him to the pink hedgehog. She took it, also not saying a word.

Resisting the urge in his neck to look down at the forest again, Tails flew the Tornado straight towards the craft many hundreds of times its size, the wind whistling around him.

* * *

An insistent beeping finally broke the moment between Shadow and the Doctor. Turning with great speed for such a large man, Robotnik placed his hands quickly but gently on the attention-seeking console. His eyes ate up the information, and their observations were not welcoming.

"This is ridiculous!" he exploded. "How could everything just change so easily?"

A quiet voice spoke. "What is the problem?"

Robotnik jumped; Shadow was standing by his side, moving there as if a ghost. The Badniks especially were agitated, chittering confusedly at the strange hedgehog, which their memory banks kept insisting was their highest priority target. But there were no orders from their master, no instruction to destroy. The Badniks were completely lost.

Robotnik attempted to explain the situation. He knew he could trust Shadow. He wasn't entirely sure how he knew, but he did. "The Master Emerald is in place in the engine room, and we are taking off. But somehow, my enemies have managed to make it on board the ship! That foolish echidna, that _loathsome_ blue hedgehog, and…" Robotnik swiftly looked at where Rouge used to be, and his moustached bristled as he grimaced. "…and that thief is now loose as well!"

"Why do they hate you so?" Shadow enquired in a calm monotone.

Robotnik straightened, still glaring at the beeping console as if this entire situation was its personal fault. "Those stupid mobians… they never understood my intentions. Because I build machines made of metal, I am supposedly evil… they try to destroy me… all I ever intended was to…" He lapsed into silence.

After a moment, Shadow broke it. "…About Maria… find out about your species."

"YES!" The Doctor's fist slammed down, denting the metal with a loud crash. A ripple went through the shocked Badniks. "I don't even know why that cursed hedgehog hunts me so ferociously! He made the first move! The only conclusion I can come to… is that my kind were wiped out by these apparently peaceful creatures who guise themselves in the form of animals of nature!" The man spat the last words, his face twisted with the agony of the unknown, his lack of knowledge.

Shadow thought about this. Was it truly these… mobians, he called them… that killed Maria? His brow wrinkled as he tried to remember the species of the soldiers that attacked him and his family. The memory was becoming clearer, Ivo himself, much younger, could be seen with Maria.

A flash of silver… no, that was the gun… black? No, that was… something else… shadows… there were only emergency lights at the time…

The hedgehog's mind filled up with his past experience, and suddenly every single soldier bore the silhouette of spines. His half-memory painted them blue, stained with innocent blood and a vicious smile, and Shadow's teeth clenched so hard they caused him pain.

"Yes…" he said bitterly. "It was them…"

* * *

It was close now, Knuckles could feel it. The Master Emerald wailed in its musical language, emboldening him and angering his blood, making the Guardian nearly unstoppable. The heat radiated from his fur.

The tiny Badniks foolish enough to stand against him were smashed to dust with his punches, and the larger ones screeched agonisingly with tearing metal as he split them apart with strength enough to crack a mountain. Thundering booms echoed throughout the dank corridors as pieces of metal went everywhere, spraying all over like rain, tinkling forlornly. The Guardian's breath was like steam, growling and seething from his lungs and through his teeth, spitting onto the broken corpses.

He ran on, and found himself in an enormous room, nearly rivalling the control room in its size. But whereas the brain of the ship was a half-spherical shape, this room was tall rather than wide, and the oblong shape stretched both above and below him. At the bottom of this shaft, Knuckles could see a bubbling liquid, orange in colour but shifting to red and yellow in places.

"I suppose you could call that icky stuff the blood of this place."

The dreadlocked head shot up, swinging wildly. The violet gaze of Knuckles stabbed into the aqua green one of Rouge. "It flows around the entire ship, you know. I've been doing research."

"You mean spying!"

"Either way," she said unashamedly. "Now, aside from that Master Emerald being mine already, I'm also rather interested in the smaller market." Her eyelids batted at the confused male.

"What?"

The bat sighed. "The Chaos Emeralds, of course. I know you have them."

Knuckles bared his teeth at her, and leaned forward, his hands almost visibly twitching to be around her neck. "You would _dare_… even to steal…" Words failed him, as Rouge knew they would.

_So predictable…_

The echidna appeared to reach a decision. His face hardened, and he shifted his feet into a ready stance. "Out of my way."

Rouge grinned, also shifting her weight in preparation. "Sure thing… once I have what I came for… Knuckie."

Knuckles yelled, and leapt.

* * *

There was a solitary signal, moving at unnatural speed through the ship. The computer identified the last remaining Chaos Emerald.

"He's heading right for the Eclipse Cannon."

"I will protect it."

"Fortunately he has taken the long way round. That should give you plenty of time to stop him, despite his speed."

"Of course. I am the Ultimate Life Form."

As Shadow turned and left, disappearing in a blur of motion, the sensors picked up another signal, this one hauntingly familiar to the Doctor's trained eye. He ground his teeth and cursed Fate for stacking up the cards against him yet again.

"…The fox as well? Then he's mine…"

* * *

**S: I hope that was entertaining for you. I'm not entirely sure whether it's a good read or not, as to me it seems awfully flat. But unless I am much mistaken, plot happened. Therefore, it might just be interesting in itself.**

**I'll do my best to get the next chapter out in a fortnight this time.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	9. Chapter 9

**S: I'm getting better, I think. One day I might actually update on time! (audience gasps)**

**This chapter went through a few forms before becoming this, and it took a while because of that. I'm trying really hard not to contradict anything I wrote in previous chapters, which is harder than I anticipated, despite me having a clear plan for the story in the first place.**

**Anyway, please, enjoy.**

* * *

Rouge jumped backwards just in time, feeling the wind of the spiked fist as it passed her vertically. Her ears listened out for the odd whistling that always seems to accompany such a powerful strike, but instead of that there was a jarring thump as Knuckles' hand caved in the beam they stood on.

Like dancers, they both leapt off the doomed piece of metal, and alighted on its visual twin, a few feet away. The smashed girder they had recently occupied slid down into the waiting arms of the orange pit, fighting all the way, scratching at the walls with its edges like they were fingernails on a blackboard. There was no splash, just a sizzle.

"Temper temper." The bat was unruffled by the obvious superiority of strength. She'd seen it all before. Knuckles' only response was a growl, and he charged forward again, arcing his body into a sweeping kick at the last second.

Rouge ducked under this but had no time to counterattack as a fist plunged towards her torso. All she could do was stand to the side, toes on the edge of the metal, as it whizzed by. Catching his hand, the bat hauled herself up on top of it even as the Guardian swung his arm to the side to knock her away, leaving her in the perfect position to-

He dropped his arm. She yelped in surprise and provided herself as an easy target for an open palmed slap from Knuckles' other arm.

Rouge shot through the air like a furry bullet and nearly broke her back on a third girder running parallel to the first two. She had enough presence of mind to hook her elbow round it as her lungs screamed and her vision faltered. It was sheer luck the impact missed her wings.

The only sounds she heard were her own heartbeat as she struggled for air, and the faint rumble of the energised liquid below. Vaguely her mind wondered why her opponent hadn't prised her off here yet and let her fall.

To her credit, Rouge recovered in little more than a few seconds, despite how long it felt to her. With a flick of her light figure she was standing on the metal beam that saved her life, and looked around for the echidna. He wasn't there anymore.

She turned. No, not there either. Rouge licked at the roof of her mouth, finding an unpleasant bitter taste. The melting beam below had exuded a terrible smell of burning, the kind that coats itself to your mouth as well as invading your nose. The air currents flowed upwards with the heat, meaning this was all she could smell. She couldn't detect anything above her, for example…

The bat skipped forward a few steps and felt her former position instantly filled with a loud rush of air. She pivoted on her boots and saw Knuckles' sharp grin mere inches from her face, his arms wrapped around himself. He had clearly intended to grab her from above.

She wasted no time. A kick lashed through the air, barely blocked by a rising knee, which then came out in a kick of its own. Rouge twirled in the air, effectively rolling across the outstretched limb with a smile and kicking at the Guardian's head. It hit with a strong tearing noise, cutting a deep mark in his skull. Knuckles staggered, and Rouge knew there would be no better chance for thievery. Her hands _moved_, and they came back considerably heavier.

The girl blinked. _How can he possibly carry these around…?_ But as soon as she looked at them, the two Chaos Emeralds in her hands faded into coloured pinpricks of light, absorbing into her gloves.

"H-hey! Where'd you go?!" She rubbed her fingers together frantically, eyes darting back and forth. "Wha…"

BAM.

"…ugh…" There was a tinkling noise, like dropped coins, cutting off abruptly.

Blood dripped onto the stainless, gleaming metal. Rouge was allowed a close up view, doubling over from the fist in her stomach, before a follow up sent her in an uncontrollable flip backwards straight into a metal wall. She coughed up red. Two small noises, sounding vaguely like _Fsh_, met her ears, and she looked up.

From her position she got a first class view of Knuckles. His hand was still in the punching pose, the white fabric shaking along with his frame. The blood from his head wound had flowed in spidery lines down his head, slowly dripping from his chin and each of his dreadlocks. The red fur there was stained deeper with the blood, and he didn't even bother closing his mouth as a solitary line touched his gums. Rouge watched him taint the grey metal below him with drips as his teeth slowly turned bloody.

As well as the blood there was a faint glow around him; predominantly his fur shade but the bat's eyes could detect edges of other colour.

_So, I can steal the gems when I injure him. Good to know._

At that point it didn't occur to her what must have happened to the two she had just stolen, as she had most certainly been injured while holding them, and Knuckles was no pickpocket.

* * *

The air broke apart with the burst of fire, each deadly shell missing the plane by what seemed like an atom each time. Amy had long run out of breath to scream, but she tried anyway, getting only a hoarse gasp. It was drowned out in the storm.

She'd never seen such ferocity at all. The entire Death Egg seemed to blast with light constantly, a never-ending stream of bullets, missiles and strange humming beams that left scars on her pupils. She wished she could curl up more in her seat, even if it wouldn't make an iota of difference if Tails' concentration wavered even for a millisecond.

The fox threw himself into the battle quite literally, his small orange arms wrenching the plane through the sky with the illusion of muscle power alone. His torso danced around the pilots' seat, his head being dragged from side to side as the Tornado used ever more ludicrous means of avoiding fire. One could only imagine the Doctor's face getting steadily filled by his teeth as he grimaced in anger more and more at the plane's survival. Amy could imagine it rather well, actually.

Tails froze. Amy's nerve impulses in her eyes and brain had just enough time to see that before a wing blew off and the plane span in, spiralling closer and closer to the enormous black ship. It opened an immeasurable mouth in her vision, and they were swallowed whole.

* * *

Sonic was beginning to get impatient. His sense of direction had hardly ever failed him, often pointing him into the enemy's weakness most of the time. Now, however, he could feel something was wrong.

The corridors were black, not being lit from anywhere in particular but just being lit. There were absolutely no Badniks anywhere. This was irritating, as he wanted something to smash. Lots of Badniks usually meant he was on the right track, as well.

He ran on, feet echoing much like a hummingbird's wings, so fast as to be constant. His breath blew in his face as he ran, but this didn't bother him. He ached to blow this place up, but at the same time, knew that it would be useless to simply attack random sections of wall. If only there was an enemy to kill… that would make it much simpler.

And as if he was a gift from the gods themselves, the black hedgehog drew level with him. Sonic could almost _sense_ him thinking of an opening phrase that wasn't horribly overused.

"Sonic," he said, emotionless in his stare.

The named blue hedgehog turned his head slightly to look at him. "Faker," he spat back.

Shadow could see his opponent's face crinkle into a hate-filled scowl, and it took considerable willpower not to follow his example. He hissed back. "_Faker…_at least call me by my name… _Shadow_."

Sonic snorted, a disgusting sound heightened by his running motion. "Robots don't need names," he scoffed.

This time, Shadow growled. The arrogant…! Then he smiled.

"The only way you'll find out for sure…" he said, his voice smooth like thin ice above a freezing lake, "is to defeat me… mere mortal. Animal."

The ceiling opened up at that moment, extending far upwards and outwards, showering the two runners with space worthy of high-speed combat. They duly obliged this courtesy, and clashed on the long bridge leading up to the Eclipse Cannon.

* * *

As Rouge got up, she felt something creak. With a wince, she ignored it, rising up into a standing position. Knuckles' throat exuded deep rumbles, and he in turn adjusted his feet and hands into a stance. They were both ready.

Rouge screeched out at an unbearable pitch, and instantly dropkicked the echidna in the face from more than ten feet away, connecting with a meaty crunch. This amazing feat was equalled a moment later by Knuckles' reaction, which was to say, nothing. His head snapped backwards from the impact, but his limbs did not move, his shoulders only moved so far as to prevent his neck breaking… and then his head fell back again, his eyes narrowing at the dumbstruck bat.

A gloved hand shot out, took a neck as its prize, and Knuckles hoisted Rouge off her feet and began to strangle her.

"I have had enough of you." There did not need to be any force in the words for Rouge to understand. He was going to wait until she had no more strength. He didn't _need_ to do anything else. It was taking everything her own arms had to hold off the fingers of just one of his hands. If he decided to use the other as well…

_Screw that! I'll make things as difficult as possible for you, echidna!_

Rouge's feet kicked out, striking wherever they could. Knuckles' chest quickly bore more injuries, which did not seem to faze him, but at least he was forced to use his second hand to block the more lethal of her slashing attacks.

But Rouge wouldn't be a professional thief if she couldn't lift possessions with more than her hands…

Knuckles watched his opponent's mouth slowly turn into a smile. Her face was streaked with sweat, white fur was grey with the effort of holding him back, yet as time went on, and she undoubtedly got more fatigued, her smile only widened.

_What…?_

Then it hit him, the feeling of emptiness that could only mean the Chaos Emeralds weren't with him anymore. His eyes bulged as he gasped. With a roar that resounded through the metal room, drowning out all else, he threw the bat straight up. Bright jewels rained around him, but his flailing hands caught none, and the four Chaos Emeralds she had just stolen from him fell straight into the orange pit.

The sounds they made stayed with him forevermore. His ears heard them again and again, soft, gentle sounds, scarring him with their horror. _Fsh. Fsh. Fsh. Fsh._

Knuckles felt for the presence of the other two emeralds, but no, there was nothing. Dimly he recalled hearing similar noises earlier in the fight, and the Guardian fell to his knees, struck with weakness by his failure. All six of the jewels now belonged to that orange tomb.

He heard a thump near him, vibration travelling through the girder to his numb limbs. Then a pitiful, pained whimper. Fabric slipping, hands slapping on ungrippable metal. One last grab. Then, silence.

Knuckles dragged his eyes away from the emerald's graves to see a white hand grasping the edge of the beam. The bat dangled pathetically, that one hand the only thing preventing her from falling to her death. Her wings were crushed, mere bleeding paper attached to her back. Knuckles could already see her grip loosening, her broken body wanting to follow the steady stream of red blood into the abyss. He had thrown her into the ceiling with incredible force, it was a miracle in itself that she could hold on even this long.

The Guardian watched her. Her fingers slowly dragged across the metal, each passing second releasing their hold. One finger fell from the girder. Two. A third went, quicker this time.

Knuckles would remember this moment, and wonder what would have happened if he'd made a different choice then.

* * *

The Tornado made a specific noise as it crashed. To Amy it was like a high scream, a fatally wounded bird being forced from the sky. The air prolonged its agony, whirling it around in its own flayed artificial organs as it screeched into the Death Egg. By some miracle, they had crashed straight into the long gash on the craft, exactly where they were headed anyway.

It broke like a toy as it struck the floor, the clang of metal on metal lowered somewhat by the crumpling noise of the dead machine. Amy was thrown forward out of the seat to slam into the floor, rolling along and leaving skin behind from the friction. Her back hit a wall, winding her for a moment. She was left to her thoughts, and many words a young girl should not know rocketed around her mind, with the addition of words like 'seatbelts', 'should', and 'have'.

After a while, Amy got up. She blearily opened her eyes at the wall, and used her hands to climb up it, getting to a standing position. It was quite convenient really; the wall seemed to start off at a rather shallow angle, going up in intervals until it was almost vertical. It also went between colours, switching between a pretty red and grey when it changed angles. In fact, the angles were so gentle, that she could sit upon the wall. As she did so, a sound like a small wind came to her. Odd, because there was no accompanying feeling of coldness about it. Just… the sound.

She looked around. Amy could learn things very quickly sometimes, and as such knew where in the Death Egg she was. The map was very helpful, and quite accurate. Her eyes found the wreck of the Tornado, and she suddenly remembered about Tails.

"Tails!" She ran over to the plane, and looked inside the remains of the pilot seat. "Tails!" she repeated, reaching out a hand to help him.

His fur was more red now than orange, and a long spike had only just missed killing him, instead puncturing his left side, and covering his legs in matted gore. As the fox blinked his eyes open, Amy saw half congealed blood crack and drip over his eyes from a wound on his forehead. He opened his mouth, and coughed, staining her white glove with red droplets.

"It's… it's better than it looks, Amy."

"I know."

"Huh?" Tails looked up at her, his neck clicking painfully. The young hedgehog was looking at him without the slightest sign of horror he would expect to find. Her gaze was calm and collected, and she looked over his wounds with a critical eye. The fox blinked, wondering if he was hallucinating. His vision was quite fuzzy, and his side felt like it was being devoured by a swarm of flesh eating ants, but it was quite clear that Amy Rose showed nothing resembling fear or distaste at such an obviously mangled body.

It occurred to him, not for the first time, that Amy had never really talked about her past. Sonic hadn't… _didn't_… either, but his wasn't difficult to piece together, at least the main points. Amy though… she was a mystery.

It's likely that Tails would've continued in this way, had he not chanced a look in front of him and seen a giant robot down the end of the corridor.

Tails cried out, and Amy's head jolted up to see the robot. Part of her mind froze with fear, but another part remembered that she had come from that direction. Her eyes moved downwards to see that its feet changed colours between a pretty red and grey. She felt sick.

From within the machine, Robotnik laughed. He had watched the stupid girl land in front of him, use him to pull herself up, and then she scampered away, not even realising what she was doing. He had remained silent throughout, but was unable to repress a sneer as she sat on the toes of the robot, at least fifteen feet tall.

He had wondered whether he was being foolish in not stamping on her frail body right then, but for the look on her face now, it was worth it. And besides, there was nothing either of them could do now. Absolutely nothing.

The Egg Emperor MkII lifted its arm, and took aim at the pitiful plane and its helpless occupant. Robotnik watched the fox turn his head, fur swinging wildly, at least the unbloodied fur, and shout at the hedgehog. The Doctor smiled, and pressed the trigger to shoot the arm.

BOOM!

"What the?!" Robotnik was thrown backwards as the entire robot shifted under a sudden attack. His aim was thrown off; the arm firing wildly as cumbersome feet bent and buckled the plate floor with tortured crashes of metal. As Robotnik steadied the machine, data flowed in, showing him that he'd been hit by the entire arsenal of the wrecked plane. Annoyingly, the pink hedgehog was gone.

He jerked the controls. More data poured in, telling him that the arm was stuck in the roof. Not even the powerful magnets could tear it from its position, jammed completely in the metal ceiling. Snarling, the Doctor once more turned his attention to the plane.

Tails breathed in and out, each movement feeling like a deep unholy penetration into his organs. He nearly retched with the pain, and forced his head up. There were loud crashes as the robot's feet stepped back and forth, steadying the behemoth from his surprise attack. The ammo was depleted now, there was no more the Tornado could give.

Tails planted his hands on either side of the pilot's seat, and slowly but ruthlessly ripped himself free of the plane. His exposed flesh tore with each lift of his muscles, and he bit down on his teeth to keep from crying out in explosive agony.

As the fox flopped down to the floor, he noted with satisfaction that Amy had disappeared. He hoped she had the sense to follow his instruction, and destroy this place before it was too late. She had the plans, she knew what to do.

This is what the fox hoped as he stood and faced the giant robot with little more than willpower keeping him standing. It turned and faced him fully, and he could almost see the Doctor narrowing his eyes. One of its arms was gone… good, that should give him a minute more, if he was lucky.

As Robotnik charged, a thought came to Tails that there was now no way off this space station, even if Amy was successful in blowing it up.

_Ah well. At least Sonic will be alright._

_

* * *

_

**S: And so ends this chapter. What a jolly one it was, eh? Certainly no overabundance of needless gore and violence, written in to sustain my need for blood. Of course not, where could you have got that idea?**

**Keeping all these character stories in line takes quite a bit of effort for me, previously I'd only had to keep track of two at the most. Hopefully there's no glaring errors in here, and please point them out if you see any.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	10. Chapter 10

**S: Hello. I'm still alive, don't worry. :)**

**I'm just getting really, _really_ slow. Or it could be because of crippling writer's block, combined with certain plot-related realisations on my part that necessitated somewhat frantic bouts of colourful language.**

**Please, enjoy.**

* * *

Thunder roared from the cavernous tunnel, an explosive impact tearing the thick metal. Two forms vaulted out from the billowing cloud of dust, each arcing towards the other in an instantaneous crash of blurred colour. They struck again, rending the air with colliding booms of sound. Immediately they parted, darting across their ruined battlefield in interweaving lines of red and blue.

Shadow rolled on the ground to absorb the latest impact, and took his motion further by turning it into a spindash towards his foe. Sonic's eyes went wide in surprise as the black form hurtled at him, but he jumped at the last moment, the vicious spines just clipping his shoes. That small touch was still enough to send him sprawling, and Sonic yelled as he turned over and over, miraculously still landing on his feet with a thud.

The blue hedgehog breathed out quickly as he turned, and received a blow to the side of the face that made his vision black out. The sheer force of it toppled him and the other side of his face hit the unyielding floor painfully.

Acting on instinct, Sonic reached up and a skate stomped down on his hands. He twisted it, and he heard Shadow grunt in surprise and fall heavily. The blue hedgehog smiled grimly in satisfaction before curling his legs and flipping himself back onto his feet. Then he opened his eyes, ignoring the slight tickling sensation of blood down his cheek.

Before Sonic could react further, Shadow had leapt up too, and swung his fist at Sonic's face. Instead of ducking, the hedgehog tried to block it, and flew several feet backwards, staggering.

"Whoa…" he choked out as Shadow charged forward. Sonic wasn't stupid enough to block a second time, and Shadow's swinging kick missed its target. Then a glowing blue bullet collided with him from above, slamming Shadow into the floor with a crunch. Sonic tensed and jumped up from him, making sure to press down hard on his opponents' cracked ribs as he used his chest as a springboard.

Sonic had done this move many times before. It involved vaulting off from a stunned enemy and coming down _hard_, choice of spindash or just plain old heels-first squishing. Sonic grinned, making contact with Shadow's clearly pained eyes, and let gravity pull him as he curled into a lethal spin. He didn't hear Shadow's hoarse words as he gasped for breath, but he wouldn't have cared about them anyway.

The blue ball impacted the metal bridge, throwing up wrecked rubble to clatter all around it in a sea of sudden silence.

* * *

Knuckles heard the first breath come from behind him. It sounded agonising, having to force air down through a bruised throat into battered lungs. Probably a dry throat too, taking into account how long it had probably been since the last proper breath. He turned round.

The bat was on her knees, retching onto the cold floor of the space station. When she looked up, her expression was understandably disoriented, but Knuckles had little time for such things.

"It's about time."

She stared at him, her eyes wide. The last thing she remembered was hanging onto that girder, her last moments of life slipping away from her. Now she was… fine?

A quick look at herself confirmed that her suit was still stained with the proof of their fight, but all the fatigue, all the injuries… they were gone. Rouge flexed her fingers and unfolded her wings gently. She was without a doubt in the best of health, bearing none of the mortal wounds she could have sworn happened less than five minutes ago. She took a questioning look at the Guardian.

He was standing there with his arms folded, smirking in an annoyingly uninterested way, mocking her ignorance. Well, the greatest professional thief in the world wasn't going to stand for _that_, and she jumped at him, already drawing back for a strike. A look from the red one was all it took, and suddenly all the pain from before rushed back in an instant, flooring her at his feet.

"Hmph." Knuckles turned around, ignoring her moans, and walked a short distance away, folding his arms again. His eyes failed to pierce the dank metallic entryway before him, and he frowned in annoyance. He made a slight gesture with his hand, and Rouge gasped for breath behind him, before becoming still.

"You get it, bat?" he said as he turned to face her once again prone form. "I decide whether you get healed or not."

"W-what?!"

"The Master Emerald is more than just a shiny rock, magpie thief," he spat in scorn. "It possesses all kinds of power, including the power to heal." He looked to his right, where the great jewel itself sat, glowing only faintly against the grey background. "That… metal device," his lips curled in disgust, "had already drained a lot of its strength, no thanks to you."

His eyes, reflecting the ominous light of the ethereal jewel, bored into Rouge, filling her with uncharacteristic guilt. His swaying dreadlocks framed the darkness of the corridor behind him with dancing shadows, and Rouge was certain that some of the dreads remained a deeper shade of red from their earlier fight.

Then the eyes left her to regard the emerald again, and she shivered involuntarily to shake off the feeling her mind had just been read.

_That was weird…_

"You have information I want."

"Huh?"

"You know where the Chaos Emeralds are."

Rouge scoffed. "Yeah, they're burned to a cinder in that energy pit! I'm not going to get them, if that's what you're after!" She got up to her feet, and mimicked his pose, feet spread and arms folded, staring him down.

Knuckles' hands turned into fists with a slight noise of straining gloves. He bared his teeth, his posture stiffening. Rouge's lips slowly curled up in a smile, exactly timed to infuriate any men in the vicinity.

After a long, dangerous second, Knuckles calmed down. Rouge continued to smile, looking completely unconcerned. Her composure had returned, and it was obvious Knuckles was displeased at the development.

He spoke. "You said you know where the energy goes. I want you to take me there."

"Why?"

"The Emeralds cannot be destroyed by something like that. They will simply float around until they are freed. I intend to free them, and take them back to the island with me."

"So you need a _guide_, right, Knuckie? Must hurt not being on your precious island anymore…"

Knuckles growled.

"…all alone, asking for _help_ from such a lowly 'magpie thief' as I…" Rouge brought her head back in a melodramatic fashion, taunting the echidna shamelessly.

"Don't think you're not expendable, _bat_," Knuckles hissed.

"Then why did you bother saving me?" she shot back instantly.

"This way is merely the easiest way. I can find them by myself if I want, and I'll just leave you here to _die_."

Rouge coolly looked at him, her eyes saying 'bluff!' Knuckles' eyes, narrow slits, replied 'call it then.'

The Master Emerald shone slightly in the corner, oblivious to the lightning glares shooting past it in the gloom. The being contained within also had his attention elsewhere.

* * *

Sonic knelt on the cracked floor of the bridge, letting the dust clear around him.

_So much for that robot. Nothing but scrap now. Heh._

But his confidence was short lived. The dust cleared, and there was a disturbing lack of mechanical parts flattened underfoot.

Sonic jumped up, taking a step backwards. "Where…"

A black buzz saw tore in from the side, ripping past Sonic's head as he tried to dodge… unsuccessfully. Like a long knife, a dark-furred spine cleaved effortlessly through Sonic's eye, spattering fluid damply onto the stainless floor.

Sonic screamed, clutching at the bleeding gash, his white gloves turned crimson in seconds. He stumbled and fell, writhing in pain, crying out at the sudden terrifying darkness that had taken him. His head was on fire, burning from deep within, pulsing out blood in rivers from his blinded eye to drench him in vile warmth.

Shadow stood up, uncurling from his spinning form. The red glow around him faded, and he observed the pitiful, doll-like thrashings from his adversary. The gurgling cries were grotesque to his ears, and Shadow grimaced, looking at the fast-growing pool of deep red around the blue hedgehog.

He raised his hand, which became bathed in yellow light between the fingers. "Time to put you out of your mise- gah!" He retched, falling onto his knees. Shadow's breath seemed to catch in his throat, and the sounds of Sonic's cries became dull and muted. The floor blurred as Shadow's limbs went cold, and he saw his gloved hands become spidery lines of white in an encroaching red. Then gold appeared, drowning out all else.

As soon as it came, the feeling was gone. Shadow gulped for breath, staring at the floor, getting his bearings back. His hands were now soaked in red, but he almost preferred it to the cold sweat in his fur. A shiver went down his spine as he looked at Sonic.

The flooded streets of the ruined city flashed through the black one's mind. Twice he had defeated this hedgehog, and twice there had been a strange reaction. This emptiness was not something Shadow wished to experience again, and when this hedgehog _died_… he didn't want to know what would happen.

"_SHADOW!"_

He shouted out and looked around frantically, before realising it was from his communicator. The Doctor must want something.

_"You have to get to the Eclipse Cannon, Shadow! There may be another one of our enemies there as we speak! Stop her as quickly as possible!"_

Shadow did not stop to fathom the mystery of 'her'. "Gladly, Doctor," he responded to the small device he had attached to his wrist. He cast one look back at Sonic, who had stopped screaming, and was merely twitching, each movement making sticky noises that overlapped his short breaths.

_He's as good as dead. I have no need to finish him right now._

Shadow skated off at full speed towards the Cannon, telling himself his motivation was moving towards it, and not at all running away from something else. He was long gone before anything happened.

* * *

Robotnik closed the link with Shadow, grunting in annoyance. That hedgehog girl could still ruin everything. The Eclipse Cannon, despite its size, was quite a delicate machine. Breaking the control panels could do all sorts of damage, from destroying the delicate workings to an all-out explosion. It could travel along the energy pipes to the engine room, and react with the Master Emerald itself. The idiot mobian would be dead before she knew it, but that would be small consolation, as he would be dead too.

Regardless, there was little he himself could do about it. The Egg Emperor was not built for charging around at such ridiculous speeds as would be necessary, so Shadow was all he had. While Shadow was taking care of the two hedgehogs, Robotnik could busy himself with this other irritance in front of him.

If he only had access to both arms, the fox would have been skewered long ago. But because one of them was lodged in the ceiling, the vulpine continued to defy his destiny, dodging the solitary weapon the Doctor had left, steadily backing away down the corridor.

The Egg Emperor was actually only half complete, having suffered heavy damage from Sonic in its previous encounter with a battle situation, but Robotnik would neither admit this deficiency, nor did he have anything better to use.

The lethargic targeting system emitted a high-pitched beep as it found the fox, and Robotnik growled as the orange furball lurched out of the way of his attack for the millionth time, leaving the arm to score deep grooves in the metal plates of the floor. Again.

* * *

Rouge sighed, brushing her fur back on her forehead. "Ok then, Knuckie, I'll help you. But I want something in return."

Knuckles didn't even speak. He just raised an eyebrow, conveying more of an answer than words ever could.

Rouge batted her eyes. "Aw, come on. Not even one little piece of jewel-related motivation? You're asking a lot from a girl, you know. I can only give so much…" The bat wheedled, maintaining a classic puppy-dog pose.

"…We shall discuss it later."

"I knew you weren't that cruel! Come here you!"

"Just," he snarled, "take me there."

She pouted. "Aw. Ok then." Rouge put one hand to her chin and the other to her hip, showing Knuckles that she was thinking. She _was_ thinking, but it never hurt to act over the top sometimes. Plus, it was a nicely revealing pose when she leaned on one leg.

_Now, what did that map look like?_

She'd taken care to look at the map in detail before sneaking off from the Doctor and that weird hedgehog he'd been so fascinated with. The energy pipes flowed throughout the ship like a spider web, going into every part, but there were two places in particular that the pipes converged on. The engine room, which she could only presume they were quite near, and some giant cannon at the other end of the ship.

She smiled at Knuckles, and returned to a regular standing pose. She noted with disappointment that his eyes appeared to have not left her face the entire time. After this was over she would have to go and practice on someone back home, to make sure she wasn't losing her touch.

"Well, those pretty emeralds, assuming they're not all scorched and ugly, could end up at the engine room, or one other place I can take you. But you've already been to the engine room anyway," she cast a look at the Master Emerald, "and plus, the energy flow will be from that place rather than to it because it acts as the power source for the…" she trailed off.

Knuckles maintained his steady gaze. "Yeah?"

She looked at him. "You removed the power source for the _engines._"

Knuckles' features went into a frown, but his eyebrows shot up as he realised the implications of her statement. The room shuddered, loud straining noises echoing down the corridors to reach their ears.

"You live on a _floating island!_" Rouge groaned. "How could you be stupid enough to take away the thing making _this_ place float?!"

* * *

Amy's feet pounded on the grating as she bolted across the gap. The thin metal railing shook threateningly with every step her boots took, rattling in protest at her fast pace. Her breath heaved, amplifying the stitch in her side that stuck its thin tendrils into her stomach. Reluctantly, she slowed, catching her breath in a half crouching walk.

Amy could run very fast when she had to, but bolting away from a dozen Badniks without any warning in an unfamiliar environment had taken its toll. Fortunately she had lost them, and if she remembered rightly, the controls for the Cannon were near here.

It was very hot in the next room, and sweat creeped up in her fur as she walked, causing discomfort to the pink hedgehog. Beneath the metal grating was a sea of boiling orange, red and yellow providing a nice bonus to the overall effect. It continuously bubbled as she walked over it from high above, and Amy couldn't keep back a gulp. The railing seemed horribly flimsy, and the orange liquid seemed all too eager to swallow her.

Then she was out, and she took the opportunity for a fresher breath of air. The girl felt her muscles cooling down now, and she kept her eyes on the bed of lights in front of her.

_This must be it._

A giant pillar stretched from ceiling to floor, and lots of consoles had established themselves around and on its base like artificial grass. They also bunched around the entrances to the chamber, of which there were several. Amy nodded. Now came the part she disliked.

Amy was more than capable of smashing these to pieces with her Piko hammer, but for reasons she kept to herself, she hated using it. Besides the fact that it _hurt_, it reminded her of when it had been 'given' to her in the first place.

Forcing the memory away, Amy cleared her throat and shuffled her arms, readying herself. Just one swing would be all…

_Voom… voom… voom… voom…_

What was that noise? It sounded vaguely like someone coming closer. It definitely wasn't a Badnik; it was a more natural noise than wheels.

_Voom… voom… voom… voom…_

"Tails?" Amy stepped closer to the entrance the sound came from. It was getting steadily louder. Looking out into the corridor beyond another heated chamber, she could see a certain kind of familiar silhouette.

_Voom… voom… click._

"Sonic?" she questioned the shadowy person. He appeared to hear her, but didn't answer with words, instead walking forwards, feet tapping on the railing. After a few steps, the orange pit below lit him up perfectly.

It wasn't Sonic.

* * *

**S: Well, that's the end of this chapter. Hope you liked it! **

**As usual, I feel that there is something out of place here, but for a reason I can't explicitly reveal yet, it isn't very surprising. I've read it through many times, and it _seems_ all in order, but... you know... ehh. Probably just me. Again.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	11. Chapter 11

**S: Well... um... here's the next chapter. It might be a bit confusing, but I swear everything has an explanation. It's just not possible to explain it at the moment.**

**Here's where we discover if I'm any good at foreshadowing! XD**

**Please, enjoy.**

* * *

"Sonic?" the black figure echoed. "I'm afraid he's… busy right now."

His feet clanked on the grey railing, his shadow from the orange pit thrown upon the wall like a twisted painting. Red cuffs blended with golden rings on his wrists, shining with the rising heat.

"Who are you?!" Amy's demand did not quite mask her unease. The male hedgehog was still walking towards her, calmly crossing the gap between the doorway and the Cannon controls. The consoles around the great pillar flashed green and blue, seemingly timed with every footstep the stranger made. Even as Amy backed up towards the centre of the room, the light from the machines made her shiver somehow.

"Me?" the hedgehog replied. "I'm Shadow. The Ultimate Life Form. What's your name?"

He was like a predator. Such an innocent phrase, delivered with a monotonous tone and an unfaltering stare. And he kept walking, the sounds filling the room.

Red eyes… no natural creature had red eyes…

Amy was struck by sudden fear, and turned to run. Instantly there was a hand on her shoulder, and she screamed and threw her arm out to bat him away.

There was a yell, and a boom that resounded throughout the room, shaking Amy to her knees. Her heart was beating unnaturally fast, thumping against her chest, sending hot blood through her arm that had struck out.

The metal plating blurred for a moment, but it faded as she concentrated. The increase in temperature disappeared, and Amy let her arm drop. She breathed out slowly, and turned, resting on her hands and knees.

Her panicked strike had taken the black hedgehog completely by surprise. The enormous force had bent the thick steel around him as he hit the wall, and left a solid imprint which held him there. As Amy watched, his eyes opened and he glared at her.

"Nice… trick…" he managed. He seemed to be in intense pain, and his chest looked a bit too crumpled to be healthy. It was amazing that he was still able to speak.

Shadow grimaced, looking down at the pink girl from his newly acquired viewing point.

_How did she do that…?_

Such strength was impossible to even conceive of! Just one hit had been enough to cause this much damage? She didn't even have a weapon!

_This might be interesting after all._

Ignoring the daggers in his lungs that used to be ribs, Shadow closed his eyes. And then opened them again, irises burning crimson with Chaos energy. With fleshy cracks and twists, Shadow felt his bones re-align, lost blood replenish, and the pain evaporate. He watched, grinning, as the hedgehog girl's mouth fell open with shock. With barely a movement, Shadow broke his limbs free of the wall, showering the floor with shards of metal.

He landed delicately, still glowing, and brushed his arms like it was nothing. The girl had not moved an inch, still looking at him like he was a ghost.

He laughed. "You still didn't tell me your name, you know."

* * *

_You did this?!_

_**Why yes, I did.**_

_Don't you realise what you have done?_

_**I think it's you who doesn't realise!**_

_To give a creature the power of-_

_**Why does that matter? He is still no match for us!**_

_But still…_

_**This was always your problem, Chaos! You are weak! You have no idea how I even did this, do you?**_

_How dare you call me weak! You are trapped as much as I!_

_**We'll see for how long…**_

_What do you mean?_

_**What do you think I mean? MY plan for escape is nearly complete! What about yours?**_

…

_**Oh that's right, you don't HAVE one! I think that priestess was a bad influence on you.**_

_This is something that is FORBIDDEN! You KNOW it is!_

_**And what can that fool do to stop me? His power is pathetic anyway.**_

_He MADE us!_

_**That doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Have you forgotten the purpose of the cycle?**_

_The mortal creatures were never a part of it!_

**…_you really have become corrupted, Chaos. I wonder, was it that girl… or was the rot present even before that? Could it be that you were even affected by my pet?_**

…

_**You're a disgrace to our name. I shall leave you here as punishment.**_

_What? And let you escape alone? You're a fool to think I would allow that to happen!_

_**What can you possibly do? Who was the one to provide them the plans? Who was the one who gave them their power? Who of us is still worshipped to this day, in the greatest of ironies?**_

_If I cannot go… YOU cannot go!_

_**Then try your best, corrupted God of Destruction. Amuse me.**_

* * *

Knuckles felt the Master Emerald change. The glow jarringly altered its hue, becoming a violent shade of bright green, bathing the corridor. Even Rouge noticed the sickening play of light on the walls. The Guardian, who was carrying the Emerald, got a front row seat to the thunderstorm of energy reflecting from the very centre of the jewel, and his running motion hardly helped matters, making the walls shift like the miasma of an undersea graveyard.

Rouge, flying ahead, made a comment on how pretty it suddenly wasn't, but Knuckles barely even noticed. He could hear voices raised in shouts, but nevertheless whispering, from inside his head. Something was happening to the Master, and he had no idea what it was.

They ran into the engine room, still littered with the sorry fragments of the Badniks that had attempted to stand in Knuckles' way the first time he was here. Two cylindrical constructions, of which one face of each could be seen, towered over everything else, hundreds and hundreds of feet high. There were thousands of markings upon them, symmetrical patterns weaving out from the centre and into the back walls like the underside of a mushroom. It was a humbling feeling to know that these two gargantuan engines, monuments to the ingenuity of intelligent life, could move a moon-sized space station into orbit above Mobius.

In contrast, when one's eyes could be torn away, they would see a tiny space between the angles of the two engines, which was just big enough to house a console and an improvised Master Emerald holder. The previous occupant of that space lay off to the side, a radiator-shaped block that folded in upon itself multiple times. Knuckles would have been interested in it had he known its name of Chaos Drive, but he did not.

"Put the stupid thing in already!" Rouge couldn't understand the complexities of the lights and numbers, but in her experience, ones that were counting down faster than she could follow was a very bad thing. The air crackled with the misshapen light of the Emerald as it reacted to the presence of the engines, but the bat could still hear the ominous sound of approaching wheels and treads. "We won't be alone for long!"

Knuckles stood in front of the appropriate spot… and hesitated. The Master Emerald had never felt so threatening before. It was quite at odds with its normal, peaceful self.

_Is it warning me?_

"Why are you still standing there?!" the bat screeched.

"Shut up!" Knuckles yelled back. There was something wrong here, he knew it. Lots of unfamiliar power was sweeping through the room with enough force to bleach his fur white, yet nothing was really happening to him. It was like it was being directed elsewhere…

Suddenly Rouge came out of nowhere and forcibly shoved the jewel down, slotting it into the engines with intoned click. "There! Now we can worry about other things, like _them_."

She turned Knuckles' head around, and a battalion of reinforcement Badniks stared right back at them.

* * *

Amy took a deep breath. The black hedgehog's fur flowed around him, shining crimson with a power that was all too familiar to her. There was one other person Amy had known who could envelop themselves in Chaos energy, but he was even stronger than her.

Amy couldn't stop it. The memories overwhelmed her, forcing their way into her mind.

"_Get up, Rose."_

She screwed her eyes tightly shut. Maybe it would all go away…

"_Get UP!" There was a movement, and a cry of pain. "Do you disappoint me on purpose, girl? I try everything, I give you chances and openings, yet you still can't do ANYTHING! GET UP!"_

_This time the blow broke something. There was a scream that continued for a long time in the hushed quiet, yet no one came to help. No one dared to help._

"…_useless child…" Receding footsteps hit the soil._

_And then the child was alone._

"AAAAAHHH!!!"

Shadow blinked in surprise. She was screaming at him like he was the devil himself, manifest before her.

"GO AWAY!!!!"

Shadow watched her fall backwards and hit the floor, sitting and cradling her head in her hands. She continued to yell out, fiercely shaking her head from side to side. The girl began to cry, her movements becoming even more violent and unpredictable.

It was clear to Shadow now that he was not the object of her focus any more. "I don't like being ignored…" he said in a low growl, advancing on her.

He managed to get within three steps of her before she reacted. If he hadn't artificially increased his perceptions, he never would have seen it coming, and even then, he barely avoided her attack. He leaped backwards as something huge swung perilously close to his face, even drying his eyes with the passing wind of it.

"What the…?"

A giant hammer, at least her size and then some, had appeared in the girl's right hand. She held it by the very end of its handle, yet it was still being effortlessly supported like it was made of cardboard.

Shadow ducked, feeling the hammer just miss his spines. He quickly concentrated, and disappeared just as she twisted her wrist and swung the hammer again to crack the floor where he had been. Shadow appeared behind her and pulled back his fist, but she was facing him already as if she'd known his thoughts.

Fortunately, Shadow was still quicker. He hastily improvised his tactics, bringing his fist up to grab her arm, halting it with considerable effort. He then struck her with his other hand, his aim perfect to send her at least ten feet to collapse on the floor.

The hammer vanished. She didn't get back up.

* * *

_**Whatever happened to not breaking the rules?**_

_Rrrrgh…_

_**Try anything you want. I have spent years working towards this moment. Oh, if only our 'wardens' could see their genetics used in such a way…!**_

* * *

Shadow's chest heaved as he coughed and gasped for breath. The girl had somehow tired him out almost completely. He let his red glow fade away, and felt the warmth of Chaos energy return to his body, instead of burning away on the outside.

It didn't make sense. How could she possibly use the same powers he could? He was _built_ to use them, how could some girl do it? And that weapon…

Shadow opened his palm and looked at it. And how was it possible to just _will_ something into being? It defied everything he had ever been taught…

Who was she anyway? Just like that blue one...

He blinked as he realised exactly what he was thinking. He was _remembering_. He remembered being taught about his powers, about how special he was. He was the Ultimate Life Form who was going to cure all disease.

His eyes pricked as he relived one of his last memories of times gone. Curing all disease… a lot of help that was when your family was killed. At least Ivo was all right.

Thinking of the Doctor reminded Shadow of his mission here. He looked at the Eclipse Cannon carefully.

_It seems undamaged… wait._

There was a familiar signature coming from the pillar. Shadow recognised it immediately as the Chaos Emeralds reacting as they were brought together.

_How could they have got in there?_

He could see special slots around the consoles that had been designed with the emeralds in mind, but they were empty. The signature was definitely coming from within the Cannon itself, as if the Emeralds were going through the pipes themselves. Shadow glanced behind him to the heated chamber beyond the room, where the liquid power source flowed. It wasn't that hard to believe they could get in there if dropped... but to get to the Cannon so fast seemed a bit too convenient...

He moved a little closer to the Cannon, pricking his ears. The slight bubbling noise gently came to him, and yes, there were clunks as well. No doubt, they were in there. But before he could examine it further, he heard the girl moan from behind him.

She sat up jerkily, wincing at every movement. Shadow had a moment of eye contact with her, just enough to realise her eye colour was identical to Sonic's, before he wrapped his hand around her neck.

"I want to know your name," he hissed over her splutters. "Who are you, and where are you from?"

He felt the girl's hands scrabble at his own, and he impatiently forced her head down to the floor with a thump, leaning over her.

The physical contact was a terrible mistake, although Shadow didn't know it.

* * *

_**What are you so happy about?**_

_Your pet has a weakness._

_**What?**_

_Look at what's happening to him. You can see it transferring, can't you?_

**…**

_What? Suddenly you've gone silent, old friend. _

_**It… it doesn't matter anyway! She won't last long enough to have an effect!**_

_Maybe not… but this one here... _

_**No! You can't! That one's already-**_

_-used the same weakness to his advantage. Your plan is failing!_

_**No!**_

_Yes._

* * *

Shadow's hand began to shake. It started slowly, but it kept building up until even Amy noticed it. She watched his eyes change from anger and frustration to disbelief, and then worry.

Seizing her chance, she found it very easy to prise his fingers from her neck, and all he did was watch. She kicked him in the stomach, forcing him away from her. As she sat up, she saw him convulse, red and yellow light coming from his body and the golden rings on his wrists and ankles.

Amy didn't have the strength to stand up, much less fight, but he didn't look in good shape either. He gave a long, drawn out choking noise as the light disappeared, and he fell to one knee.

"Not… again…" he breathed, "Why…?"

Shadow was nearing breaking point. So many questions flew around his mind at once, asking again and again why this reaction kept happening, why did he now feel so weak, why couldn't he remember key details about his life, why was this girl so hard to kill, how could anyone have the power he did, _who was responsible for it all?_

The black hedgehog let his jaw drop to scream, but only managed an airless breath. Another Chaos signal swamped his overloaded senses. This one he knew, but that made it no less impossible for its source to be here.

Shadow turned his head to the side… and blacked out as Sonic rammed him straight into the Eclipse Cannon.

* * *

Knuckles kicked out, and felt a satisfying clang as his boot connected with a Badnik's head, cleaving it straight off. It hit another one, sparks flying everywhere from the impact.

_One down… lots more to go._

They came at him, wave upon wave of writhing metal, each scrambling over the other like eager insects. A gloved fist scythed through their ranks, tearing a half dozen of them to broken shreds, only to be replaced by twice that number.

Knuckles' position was becoming compromised, yet he stubbornly refused to move. He would stand here and guard the Master Emerald no matter what it took! He caved in the face of another insolent robot even as its partner jabbed its clawed arm into his leg, the blade coming out the other side with ease.

He roared in anger and slapped the Badnik with the back of his hand; it blew into pieces when it hit the wall. Balancing on his other leg, he pulled out the Badniks' now severed limb with brute strength and swung it like a sword, carving up ten more of the robots that were assaulting him. He then threw the claw at a flying Badnik, toppling it from the air to crash into its ground-based comrades with a mighty bang.

Rouge had taken to the air, dodging the shots of the metal tide and kicking the small flying ones into the shooters like footballs.

Though her instincts told her to run away, Rouge still stayed. She wasn't entirely sure why. Perhaps it was for the Master Emerald, perhaps because if Knuckles died, she might revert back to dying. She couldn't think of any other possibilities, but those two, for some reason, didn't quite fit. It annoyed her, and she expended her annoyance by kicking as hard as she could.

The Master Emerald glowed, spreading its power over the entire battlefield. But Chaos was too busy to pay attention to such a mundane event as a physical battle. After all, the engines were connected to the Eclipse Cannon, and there were far more interesting things going on down there.

* * *

_**You can't do that!**_

_Yes I can. And I'm going to._

_**No! Chaos, don't! Can't you see? Only he is strong enough to break the bonds!**_

_No._

_**What?**_

_I have found… something else. Something which you cannot use._

* * *

Shadow was jolted back to consciousness. Lightning surrounded him as the Eclipse Cannon overloaded with the power of the Chaos Emeralds. He could sense that all seven were now in the same place, and they were reacting. The energy penetrated him from every inch, burning every nerve with agony.

His eyesight returned. He saw Sonic pinning him.

Sonic's face was a mass of flapping flesh, red liquid dripping down across his chin and his chest like some disgusting saliva, and some of the blood had tried to clot, creating a vision of darkened pond scum in the gash that used to be a working eye. Shadow froze in dumbfounded horror, and he barely heard Amy's scream of terror at the blue hedgehog's monstrous look.

The air around Sonic for several inches was a solid blue, misting off his body constantly. One arm pinned Shadow to the Cannon, uncaring of the electrical discharge, the other a fist covered in Chaos energy.

The seven emeralds redoubled their efforts in an almost sentient way, filling the air with suffocating electricity. Shadow reached up to Sonic's hand to wrench it off him, and grimaced in pain as the contact burned him. The hedgehog's blue fur appeared to melt before his eyes, transforming into an empowered gold, travelling up his arm to his body. As it reached Sonic's head, he bared his teeth in the manner of a sadistic child holding a helpless animal, his one good eye staring past Shadow to slash at the soft, sweet nectar of his brain.

The golden light slithered on and around Sonic's blinded eye, repairing the tissues and realigning the crushed retina like knitting until it was new again. The once green coloured iris was now a pure bloodshot red, reflecting a disturbing madness from the depths of his golden transformation. Sonic let out a barking, harsh laugh, and leaned in close to Shadow's face. The glow was close enough to make the black hedgehog's eyes water, and Sonic watched the procession of tears, delighted. He took care to pronounce every movement with slow and steady sadism as he raised up his hand, the fingers moving like the white glove was a furious spider assaulting its prey.

Sonic's voice was high with childlike excitement. "An eye... for an eye..."

Shadow couldn't even breathe anymore. The whole world was Sonic's hand and face, twitching with glee.

The golden voice went deep and gloating as he finished his words. "_...or maybe two..._" The hand lunged.

Then Shadow saw no more, heard no more, knew no more.

But the feeling went on forever.

* * *

**_NO! I won't let you!_**

_You can't back out now! This is your doing! He is your pet! USE HIM IF YOU DARE!_

**_I WILL!_**

_THEN NOW IT'S MY TURN!_

* * *

Amy could see everything Sonic was doing. She watched as he ran his hand through sticky oceans of gore, crushed, tore, stretched and ripped it apart, all to the sound of his laughter. The chilling act was made worse by his plaything not even making a sound, contorted and broken, yet utterly silent.

The lightning flashed and sparked over the surface of the Cannon, lashing around the two like whips. It intensified, firing waves of heat into them. Sonic did not react, but Amy could see Shadow change. The yellow lightning drained it's colour into his fur, changing it, corroding the black until it was gone. His back arched, and seven colours ripped free of the machinery behind him to orbit around the pair.

And then something _pushed_.

She gasped as the pressure wave crushed her, the seven emeralds splashing impossible shades of light into the back of her mind. A voice, echoing from everywhere, spoke its syllables into the room, and with each word, the Chaos Emeralds grew brighter. Brighter, and then even brighter, until the two hedgehogs were nothing but misshapen suggestions in the fog of rainbow colour.

**_This power will free me!_**

Sonic looked on at Shadow's now shining fur, and grinned. He drew back his hand, bored already with his play, and curled the long fingers into a fist, squeezing out blood from his glove to drip onto the floor. He laughed, but there was something alien behind it, another voice, different to the first, enjoying this moment.

Sonic was going to punch, but Amy saw something different. His other hand, the one pinning Shadow, had opened up, and an aqua flame surrounded it. She looked at it, and the sound of water met her, yellow eyes looking out.

**_Im...impossible!_**

_You're not the only one with a pet!_

Sonic yelled out, his words layered with the voice of the second speaker, while the first screamed for him to stop.

"_Chaos Control!"_

Time froze. Bright blue water flourished from Sonic's hand, completely submerging Shadow.

**_No!_**

_Your pet is no longer in good company! I'm afraid he'll be leaving now! Hahahaha!_

Then Shadow disappeared as the time rushed back, leaving Sonic's fist to crash into the side of the machine, snapping the pillar as if it wasn't even there. The ceiling caved as the support beam crumbled around the room, and each half of the Cannon fell down onto the floor.

A slab of metal six feet in length fell from the ceiling to land on Sonic. It smashed on his head, and he didn't even seem to feel it. His golden aura expanded, inching along the floor, sprouting yellow flames where it touched. The Chaos Emeralds now orbited him, moving his raised spines like in a wind.

Sonic blinked. Where had the toy gone?

The eye that Amy could see turned towards her, and made contact. The green that she had come to know well had been replaced by bloody red, slivers of crimson from his iris overtaking the white of the rest of his eye. Amy couldn't see his shoes, they were in an ocean of exuding yellow light that was still advancing inexorably across the floor.

Sonic smirked. No matter. There's another toy over there.

The yellow hedgehog turned leisurely towards the girl, as if to prolong the experience. His expression made it all too clear of his intentions. Amy whimpered.

Suddenly Sonic retched. He curled over as if struck, his hands wrapping around his body. He stumbled backwards, each footstep a thunderous impact on the steel as it bent and buckled.

_**I'll have to use you then!**_

Sonic's body floated up until it was in the centre of the room, shrieking at the ceiling and thrashing against nothing. Out of the ruins of the Cannon, blue water threw itself forward, mixing in the orange liquid that used to run through the pipes, surrounding Sonic and hiding him from view.

_**You can't stop this one!**_

_But I can change what it does. _

The entire room shook as the light exploded, and the last thing Amy saw was white.

* * *

Knuckles thrust his fist through another Badnik's body, leaving it hanging like a doll before throwing it to the side, bowling over others. In this kind of battle, everything was your enemy, you could aim indiscriminately.

But for some reason, even as his fist found its next target, all of the Badniks just… stopped. They vibrated, letting out a high-pitched keening, before falling over like statues.

"Huh?" Knuckles breathed. Then he felt the power. "No!"

He threw his head round, spines flailing, drops of sweat flying around him, to stare at the Master Emerald. Cracks thick as tree branches had appeared on it, white light spewing forth in tendrils of destructive energy. The console for the engine was ripped asunder from just a moment of contact, and the enormous cylindrical engines began to steam and shudder from the excess power.

"It's going to-!"

But he never finished his sentence, because at that precise moment, the Master Emerald shattered like glass, the white light exploding outwards without care for metal nor flesh, taking all into itself. It was eerily silent even as the shards trembled and hit the floor, yellow eyes and the vision of water the only things left.

And even they disappeared.

* * *

Robotnik became aware of alarms in the cockpit. That fox still hadn't been skewered, and he hadn't realised how intensely into the battle he'd become. The alarms seemed to have been ringing for some time.

Cursing, he opened a menu to find out what the fuss was about. If Shadow had failed…

But as the impossible, ruinous data met his eyes, all thoughts of the Eclipse Cannon and Shadow were wiped from his mind.

Sections of the ship had just completely disappeared, the lines of the real-time blueprint steadily evaporating before him. One from the engines, and one from the Cannon, they both encroached upon the ship, and all beyond the barriers vanished. The computer threw up a single card in desperation, pleading for instructions, asking what to do.

Robotnik read the words, and his entire body went numb. A strange exhilaration gripped his heart as the reacting energy came ever closer to him.

He whispered the words. "_Chaos Control…_"

* * *

**S: There. Confused? Heh.**

**Because this chapter is... well, different from the rest (to me anyway) I'm naturally uneasy about it. The next chapter probably won't be as crazy as this one though.**

**Thanks for reading!**


	12. Chapter 12

**S: I've updated on time?! Surely it is a mistake! The end of the world must be coming!**

**...wow, it isn't. Cool!**

**Well, there's a reason why this one's here so soon, but I'll leave you to figure it out. I quite like this chapter actually.**

**Please, enjoy.**

* * *

He put his feet onto the desk with a clunk. As he leant back, his chair squeaked, and he let his body relax. Sighing, he reached into his pocket, bringing out a pack of cigarettes, and using his teeth, extracted one. A lighter clicked, and within a few moments, he was quite contently breathing smoke into the room.

The air conditioning came on as it detected the smoke, filling the room with a low hum. He amused himself for a moment by watching his smoke rings be devoured by the suction, the thin constructions falling apart easily. The smoke had no chance to thicken in the air to provide a smell, despite its attempts to cling to his unkempt brown hair.

_These things have a lot of flavour. Shame they're in such short supply._

Usually the supply division was efficient enough so that it was rare when a shortage occurred. Even out-of-the-way bases in the remotest parts of the world were well supplied, much to the pride of the division.

He smirked, letting the cigarette balance expertly between his lips. He scratched at his face, morning stubble invading his chin with alarming speed.

_I wonder if this place counts as out-of-the-way. On one hand, it's right next door. On the other, it's more than a million miles._

He'd been assigned to this base months ago as its commander, and if he hadn't already been sworn to secrecy through previous missions, this would definitely have qualified. A small outpost, thoroughly locked down and heavily disguised, so that none of the locals would even know it was there. That was of high importance, apparently. There was to be no contact of any kind, observation only.

That kind of irked him in the beginning. If the job was babysitting scientists who were _researching_ the things, then he still wouldn't like it, but at least there'd be some guy in a white coat that would know what was going on.

He was a soldier, a fighter. He was trained to devise battle tactics and hold his own against a dozen lesser men.

He was _not_ trained to watch talking animals.

He readjusted his feet on annoyed impulse, crossing his legs the other way round. His uniform rustled slightly as he moved, the black-blue combination quite at odds with the light grey desk. He exhaled again, the smoke being whipped up by the air currents and quickly disappearing into the depths of the vent.

Sure, the previous team had made it as comfortable and homely as possible. Even this office furniture he was using now would not look out of place in a normal building, and it's not like there was any reason to disguise the interior of the base. It all seemed quite normal and placid until you realised there were no windows.

_I've forgotten what the wind is like. Fresh air always has a particular flavour you can smell as well as taste. Irreplaceable. _

At least it was relatively simple work. The crazy little animals (he could never remember the proper term for them) paid little if any attention to the world around them, their tight-knit villages unconcerned with the trifles of others, unless it was for trading purposes.

He stretched his arms. Sometimes he thought the dull, dull things deserved having a maniacal descendant of a traitor amongst them.

For that was their real mission. Watching the cute critters was inevitably what they mostly did, but with the technology at their disposal, they were to watch the movements of a certain Ivo Robotnik.

At this he clenched his fist, crushing the now-finished cigarette. The name 'Robotnik' was still spat out among the military to this day, despite how many decades it had been. Abusing the trust of the government to create armies of vile mutants, as well as experimentation on defenceless animals –even humans too, some whispered – stuck in the memory.

But even as they destroyed his abominations and wrecked his treasonous plans, the mad scientist had already completed and put into action his worst scheme. Rumour had it that Robotnik had succeeded in creating a creature so powerful it could wipe out armies, and indeed, the casualties of the attack on the ARK had been enormous.

If only GUN Command had realised sooner about the CC technology…

Anyone who knew anything about the CC had been forced to figure out what they could about Robotnik's toy, but with the man himself unavailable, it took years before they could accurately reproduce its effects.

And when they had finally figured it out, and came here to catch his last descendant… they were too late. Ivo had already had years to build up, and without any competition or restriction, had a powerful stranglehold on the continent. The CC could not provide GUN with enough firepower or resources to take down Ivo, so they were forced to sit and watch him, waiting for their moment.

_And that's where we came in._

A previous commander of this outpost had the good sense to use his surroundings to his advantage. After studying the animals and their ways, he learned that they were surprisingly vicious, and even if they had no hope of deposing Robotnik from his robotic throne, they would prove a valuable thorn in his side.

It only partially worked.

For that had inadvertently led Robotnik to build his own version of the ARK, complete with a copy of the Eclipse Cannon. It was only fortunate that the space station had no way of threatening GUN. Ivo appeared to have no idea of his grandfather's CC tech, which in any case could only work on human-sized objects. The mere thought that he could transport that leviathan to his place of origin was completely laughable to GUN's scientific division.

The commander leaned back further with a creak from the chair, to make his pocket accessible again. He took out a second cigarette, the air con almost sighing in resignation, and clicked the lighter. Before he could light up, there was a knock at the door.

"Come," he said, his deep voice carrying over the space. The door opened silently, and in stepped one of the younger soldiers, worry written all over his face.

"What is it?" He had tactfully hidden his cigarette by letting his arm fall behind his desk.

The young man hesitated, his brown hair ruffled and messy, and his collar undone. Unlike his superior, relaxed and generally lenient, he had kept himself to the high standard as was expected of a GUN soldier. Among the men of the obscure outpost, this made him stand out, and so the fact that he looked quite untidy now was cause for concern.

"Spit it out, lad."

The soldier told him. The commander fell out of his chair.

* * *

The forest was peaceful. Sunlight gently stroked the greenery, shining through gaps in the foliage and creating small pillars of light everywhere. Brown trunks were healthy and tall, reaching up to the blue sky, and melodic birdsong accompanied the soft, rustling wind through the branches and leaves.

It wasn't about to be peaceful for much longer though. Two sets of footsteps crunched through the undergrowth, with a buzzing noise around them.

"Yeah, there's like this guy totally lying there, and I saw him, and he wouldn't say anything, so I thought I'd show you guys 'cos you can get _anyone_ to talk. I'd like to see him try not talking with you guys asking him and-"

"Where is he?" A second voice subtly cut through the yammering like scissors in silk. It was done with great precision, as much practice had already been obtained in previous discussions with the much younger first speaker.

"Oh yeah! I left him on this tree, but I didn't really leave him there 'cos I didn't want to move him but he's still there anyway."

"…Right." The second voice was level and calm, the only indication of emotion being the pause. Considering his usual demeanour of silence, you could suspect that the pause was intentional, but of course, his face would betray nothing.

A third person, louder even than the first, if that was possible, spoke up. "This better be worth it! We've got work to do, you know!" His manner was one of impatient exasperation, and he towered over his companions in stature as well as with his relative older age.

"I promise this won't take long and he's _sooo _weird and cool and stuff you should totally see him and I think he's hurt!"

"What? Hurt! Why didn't you say so?!"

"I... didn't?"

"_No!_"

"Oh…" There was silence for a moment. "Well yeah so I saw him and he's all burned and stuff and his face looks really nasty, so I wanted you guys to see!"

The three of them stopped. They saw the person lying with his back against a tree, oblivious to them. He looked oblivious to everything in fact, and with good reason.

"That looks quite serious…!"

"Yeah, he looks pretty bad. We'd better take him back."

"Oh, cool, we're _keeping_ him?!"

* * *

**S: Credits time. As in, 'The End'. Yup, no more chapters, it ends like this.**

**I think I'll take the opportunity to thank you all for reading and reviewing, as without your help, this would be very different.**

**...I'm sure there's more stuff I could say, maybe something profound and wise, remembered throughout centuries...**

**Ah screw it. (insert wise words here)**

**See ya later! :)**


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